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LaneChange.net Customer News - December 15, 2003
In this issue...
1. Internet Gift Giving Ideas, your name IS your domain
2. New top level domain information page
3. Spam filtering service born from Backup Email Enhancements!
4. Did Google's last Dance knock you out?
5. REMINDER: Domain Renewal Scams - Don't get caught!
6. Seasons greetings and happy new year!
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Internet Gift Giving Ideas, your name IS your domain
Well, its the last full week of shopping before the holidays arrive, so we thought we'd help you out with a quick and easy gift giving idea: a dot name (.name) domain name. Dot name domains where created specifically for every individual. Your name is your identity, and a .name is your identity on the Internet!
The .name domain registration package costs only $25 USD/yr and includes email forwarding. This allows incoming email addressed to, for example, john@smith.name to be forwarded to another existing email account. This way, you don't need to learn a whole new email interface or require to check email in two places. You have full control over where your email gets forwarded through our Domain Manager and you can change the "forward to" email address at any time.
For more information on the new dot name package, see:
http://www.lanechange.net/html/about_domain_names.shtml#name
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New top level domain information page
Speaking of .name domains, a couple of months ago we announced the addition of 8 new top level domains to our list of domain name registration service offerings. We have now updated our web site with information specific to all of these top level domains. For a complete description, see:
http://www.lanechange.net/html/about_domain_names.shtml
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Spam filtering service born from Backup Email Enhancements!
We have made significant changes to our Backup Email Server service. So much so, we have accidentally turned our backup service, into a Spam filtering and reducing service! If you run your own email server and spam is a problem, get the benefit of both a backup email server (to capture email when your server or network connection is down) AND a spam filtering service too! Spammers just love to jam spam into your inbox through secondary mail servers. Up until recently, this was a problem for some of our customers. But not any longer! When you subscribe to our Backup Email Server Service, we now perform real-time testing of your domain's email server and only accept email on your domain's behalf, when your server is down. Because most spammers don't even try to send email to a domain's primary server, our backup server takes the brunt of the spam attack and rejects the spam, at the source!
For any email that does pass through our system on its way to you, we use the open source Spamassassin program that scans and tags any email it detects as spam with a special header so your email server, or email clients can setup filters to redirect time wasting spam to another folder.
Our Backup Email Server Service is only $80 USD/yr. For more information see:
http://www.lanechange.net/html/backup_email_server_service.shtml
Early next year we will be offering a new, stand alone service that will allow us to act as the front line filtering system for your email servers, that will perform spam and virus filtering and scanning, before dangerous emails reach your server.
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Did Google's last Dance knock you out?
Google, one of the most used search engines on the Internet, is constantly changing and updating their indexing algorithm to enhance the search results delivered to the searcher. A recent update (updates are commonly know as the Google Dance) to this indexing scheme occurred towards the end of November and caused a great number sites to be dropped off Google's index.
Many of these sites were small and medium size e-commerce companies, who, like most brick and mortar business, rely on business that only the busy holiday season can bring. Webmaster and search engine optimizers went to work to try and find out why their sites got dropped and what, if anything, could be done about it.
Well, the bottom line is no one has yet found the magic "key to the city" as it where. The important thing for you to remember is that search engines are designed to deliver relevant results to searchers. If your site was dropped and it was relevant to a search being performed by a user, then the user is NOT getting relevant search results and thus, the search engine is not fulfilling its mission to provide relevancy.
Searchers (and hopefully Google) are slowly starting to realize that the results returned since the last Dance are not what they should be and just like traffic from your site may be dropping off, so is Google's, as searchers switch to the myriad of other search engines out there that do return relevant content.
Moral of the story? Well, there are rules that webmaster do need to follow to design their sites to be search engine friendly, but don't go out of your way to redesign your site for GOOGLE! All search engines need to spider & index web sites that have been designed to be USER friendly, not designed specifically for search engines! Follow the tried, tested and true industry standard search engine optimization tips and then keep your site relevant and the search engines that count will pick your site up and deliver the traffic you want to your site!
For a taste of something Googley-different, try these search engines:
AltaVista: http://av.com
Fast Search: http://alltheweb.com
Teoma: http://teoma.com
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REMINDER: Domain Renewal Scams - Don't get caught!
Just a reminder. If your domain name is registered with LaneChange.net, all renewal notices will be sent to you by email ONLY. We never send out renewal notices by mail.
It has been very common practice for a company known as Domain Registry of (Canada/America/Asia/Europe) etc. to be sending out letter mail renewal forms that look very governmental and official to try and lure your business away from us. Please discard any paper mailings of these types and if your not sure about the current status of your domain, or who you should renew with, let us know and we will help you determine the source of any marketing material you receive about your domain name.
For your added protection, you can now Lock your domain through our Domain Manager. Locking provides protection against any changes or transfer requests made on your domain. To activate locking, simply login and click on Domain Locking.
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Seasons greetings and happy new year!
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all our visitors, customers,friends and family a safe, happy and healthy holiday season and happy new year!
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As always, thanks for your patronage.
Robert Schwartz
President
LaneChange.net
1 800 403-1963 (USA & Canada)
1 613 860-1667
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