Search Marketing and Internet Marketing Blog Online

I received a startling letter in the mail the other day. I register most of my domains via www.GoDaddy.com simply because I get a lot of discounts due to the number of domains I register. Regardless, I can only assume this company whores the 'whois' information from new domain purchases and then sends out a letter advertising their horrific services! If you received a letter that looks like this, BEWARE:


Directly from the letter:

WEBSITE ADDRESS LISTING INCLUDES:
Domain name submission with 8 key words/ phrases to 25 MAJOR search engines, quarterly search engine submissions

Directly from their website:
We submit your website 4 times a year to over 25 search engines and business directories like these below...

Google	Yahoo	MSN	AltaVista	Excite
About	Overture	Netscape	Lycos	HotBot
Quickseek	Scrub The Web	Search Hippo	Alexa Web Search	Metadata Search Spider
Search It	Super Snooper	Ultraseek	Info Probe	whatUseek Network

Before we go any further....THIS IS NOT A GOOD DEAL! NOT FOR $75!! NOT EVER!!
What are the issues with this? First off, when you submit your website to a search engine you don't get to pick 'key words / phrases'. You simply submit your URL (www.example.com).

Second, search engines have evolved tremendously since the 'early days' and the need to submit your website to search engines is no longer needed. Rather, gather a few links from some authority websites soon after you launch your new website and allow Google and Yahoo to find your website naturally by doing what they do best - following links to find new content.

Thirdly, and based on my second point, continually submitting your website to search engines (for instance the 'quarterly submissions' advertised above) IS SPAM and will only result in getting your website banned completely from the major search engines.

I was so bothered by the fact that this company, Domain Listing Services Corp, is making God knows how much money off of uneducated people I decided to do some digging.

Here is a great post from Danifer Web Services.

Here is another from HyperSensory.com which notes that DLSCorp.net also operates as ilscorp - Internet Listing Service Corp. - yes, another scam!

Yet another from Les Jones Blog (take the time to read through the comments! It is well worth it!)

Rip-Off Report: Domain Listing Service Corp - says it all!

Please feel free to contact the following organizations with your complaints:

FTC
http://www.ftc.org

Better Business Bureau
http://www.bbb.org

ZoneEdit - Their DNS host
http://www.zoneedit.com or mail support@zoneedit.com

WaveRiderHosting - their hosting company
http://www.waveriderhosting.com