Singapore Web Hosting Blog

just found that BMW site is banned by Google ! this is why i love google !

do a search for “bmw.de” in google at this moment, you get nothing returned. according to Matt, a software engineer in google who shares extreamely valuable information on his blog, it’s removed from google index because of fishy javascript redirects on bmw.de web site which is a violation of google’s quality guidelines, specifically the principle of “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”

it’s good to know that BMW is caught by google, and google does not hesitate to remove such a big brand name from their index. it’s BMW! although there might be stories under the table that we never know, at least it shows that google is willing to make it a fair game for everybody.

it reminds me another recent case that US government demanding last year that Google and other search engines turn over search information to help revive a child protection law. yahoo and msn has handed over the info. however google said no.

what the government wanted was one million random web addresses and records of all Google searches over one week time.

it’s not that the one million random URL involves privacy issues. anybody can get 1 million ramdom urls simply by browsing. what i appreciate is that google treats everyone the same way.

at least, they try to. surely there’re background stories that everage joe like myself would never know. however, how many big guys even try to cast an image that they care about us, small businesses, individuals? very few.

i like the way google said to bmw and government, hey we don’t like dirty tricks like cloaking, your using it? fine, but your gone from my index. you want my information? no, it’s not my resposibility to provide these to you. they are firm on what they should do and what not to do. as a small fish, i see hope here. the playground is leveled.

update: after i finished this post, bmw.de has been back to google index after the redirects are removed and reinclusion is filed. this is fast, for both bmw and google.

luckily i screen captured yesterday when i started writing this post:

according to NYTimes,

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered.

read the original report here.

that’s a bold move that may cause other problems.

according to the report, this special treatment includes “go straight to users’ main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a junk-mail folder or strip them of images and Web links.” but isn’t that what would happen exactly when you send a legitimate email (except that it would go through spam filters)?

how would they justify the fees when people have been sending emails with no problem for free? i’m talking about legitimate emails here, not spams. when i send emails to my friends that use AOL or Yahoo email addresses, they should reach their inboxes without delay, as long as i’m not spamming.

if my emails get filtered to junk mail folder or completely filtered out, it’s their spam filter’s fault, not mine. how would they convince me to pay when THEIR system is malfunctioning?

more interestingly, what would happen to unpaid emails when the postage system is put into place? get delivered as usual? then back to point above, why should i pay? go through more filters so that some of legitimate emails must be filtered out in order to show how important the postage is? that’s simply not right. if that happens, i would expect people dropping their AOL or Yahoo address.

a bigger concern is, will it solve spam issue? most likely no. in offline world, postage is more expensive, yet we receive ads, mail order, catolog, etc. daily in letterbox. if by paying postage, emails will be guaranteed to be delivered bypassing spam filter, tons of spammers would start paying and get their spam emails delivered.

spams are still spams. spam emails would not become legitimate because they’re paid.

i guess their logic is, spammers would not pay because they are spammers. but my logic is, spammers do not spam for the sake of spam. they do it for profit. as long as there’s profit, why not pay for the postage? if they cannot afford “1/4 of a cent to a penny” for a guaranteed reader, they are in wrong business.

what if someone pay and send phishing email?

Paying senders will be assured that their messages will be delivered to AOL users’ main in-boxes and marked as “AOL Certified E-Mail.”

some really unfortunate thing may happen then.

of course, it would reduce the number of spams for sure. if snail mail is free, people would find hundreds of ads in mailbox everyday instead of a few.

first of all, chinese new year is only one day ahead. i would like to take this opportunity to

Wish You All A year of Good Health, Peace and Prosperity!
Gong Xi Fa Cai!

looking back, we’ve been doing businesses online with fun and profit for 4 years.

5 or 6 years ago, i could not imagine i would run a few online businesses successfully 5 years later. at that time, the only Internet related thing i used effectively was email. when time flies, i’ve learnt a lot and done several e-commerce sites.

and before i knew it, i started answering questions, teaching people how to start online business, some people even call me “expert”.

i’ve seen many people that want to bring business online but never start taking any action. here are the top 3 reasons they told me that keep them from starting online business. in my mind, none of these shoud stop you.

1)i’m not an expert of anything.

people assume they must be an expert in order to start. no, you do not have to be. i know little about Internet 5 years ago. but then again, who knew much about Internet 5 years ago? if you did, what about 10 years ago? did you know the term “Internet” 20 years ago?

some people think i’m expert in SEO and online business but i knew nothing in this industry 5 years ago. my point is, you can become expert of any topic as long as you want to learn. and you do not have to be expert before you start.

you can learn while your doing it.

also, everyone knows something that others do not know. many people would like to learn the knowledge from you. think about your day job, your interests, your life experience. i’m 100% you have some knowledge that you can share with others.

2)is making money online real?

people have heard of scary stories. dotcom burst, online scams, making money quick nonsense… many people have impression that most of online businesses are in grey area: adult, spam, scam…

it’s true that there’re tons of rubbish online.

on the other hand, tens of thousnads of people are running honest online businesses selling all kinds of products and services successfully. i’m not referring to the big boys like ebay, amazon. i mean small businesses run by everage joe.

yes it is real. i’m living example

3)i’ve tried many times with no success

it’s not for everyone, that’s for sure. but chances are, you tried wrong path.

starting and running online business is like running offline business. it takes time, work, money, effort, commitment. but compared with real world businesses, it requires less resources significantly.

but you cannot join a downline club and hope you will be rich in next few months. you cannot jump from great opportunity to another great opportunity. most of these opportunities you find in emails are just nonsense, by the way.

you need to spend time to build your business from ground up.

once again, happy chinese new year.

and see ya online !