unsolicited listing in www-goto.com

[lutetia]

Seasons Greetings All,

Today I received a strange e-mail from "The Editor" of a site called http:www-goto.com

They apparently sent it to info at mydomain.com and it was redirected to my regular ISP e-mail.

It presented a few random lines of text from my homepage as a "listing" for their search engine directory (in place of the actual descriptors in my Meta tags)

It also included the following message: "Could you please be so kind as to update your [mydomain.com] directory listing by Friday so we can continue to list you, if you don't mind? Updating your listing is free! Simply go to:""


Here they provide a link to edit the listing and another to unsubscribe to the next reminder to edit the listing.

But there is no option to remove the listing, nor is there any contact information to request removal.

I guess this is an example of search engines finding you before you decide to submit your URL.

But I really don't want to list with these people or any other search engines until I decide I'm ready.

Anybody else heard from these guys? Any idea how to contact them to remove the "listing".

Thanks

[robinev]

But I really don't want to list with these people or any other search engines until I decide I'm ready.

If that's what you want, then you have a couple of options: 1. Make your entire site inaccessible to search engines by setting a DISALLOW rule in the robots.txt file. 2. Take your files off of the web server.

Search engines don't generally pay much attention to submissions. They find pages by following links elsewhere on the web. If they find a link, they'll read the page unless indexing is ruled out by either a meta tag or robots.txt.

[webado]

Actually this is an underhanded for of spam. I've had a few of those emails before. I ignore them. I know I haven't listed with them, so they're just trying to get confirmation that the email exists. You're not listed anywhere with any such outfit most probably. I know I'm not.

But that one is really just a pipeline to the true search engines.

[lutetia]

I know these engines crawl and gather everything, but I really think one should be able to opt in or out. I'll try changing the robot instructions as your recommend.

What's bizarre is that as far as I am aware, my site has not been linked to anywhere on the net as I have given the URL only to a few people. Stats have never shown anyone coming through from linking either.

Also, they seem to have completely ignored the description of my site in my Meta Tags, instead grabbing some random lines from the middle of my page.

[lutetia]

Christina,

You're probably right. The subject of the message was:

"Urgent! Please update your [MY DOMAIN] listing by Friday, December 31, 2004 so we can continue to list you (Adv)"

I clicked on the UNSUBSCRIBE option thinking that would perhaps lead to more options for delisting, but that led to a screen saying I had been removed from their mailing list and would receive no further notifications to edit my listing.

Since I replied with my ISP e-mail (not my web site mail), I'm not sure what effect that will have (will I now be deluged with junk mail?!)

I did find a listing for www-goto.com in Whois.

eTopSites.Net LLC
PO Box 7334-101591
San Francisco, CA

415-462-3044

weblistings2@www-search.com


I may send an e-mail to that address requesting removal.

Cheers[/i]

[webado]

Christina,

You're probably right. The subject of the message was:

"Urgent! Please update your [MY DOMAIN] listing by Friday, December 31, 2004 so we can continue to list you (Adv)"

I clicked on the UNSUBSCRIBE option thinking that would perhaps lead to more options for delisting, but that led to a screen saying I had been removed from their mailing list and would receive no further notifications to edit my listing.

Since I replied with my ISP e-mail (not my web site mail), I'm not sure what effect that will have (will I now be deluged with junk mail?!)

I did find a listing for www-goto.com in Whois.

eTopSites.Net LLC
PO Box 7334-101591
San Francisco, CA

415-462-3044

weblistings2@www-search.com


I may send an e-mail to that address requesting removal.

Cheers[/i]
I should not send any email anywhere. This will only further get you on a spam mailing list. Using your ISP's email address will probably get you more spam from them and others.

If you notice the domain names for both those sites: it's www-something .... made to look like a www. There exist 2 other (hopefully genuine) sites called www.goto.com and www.search.com - thus the ones that spammed you are a sorry attempt of spoofing.

[lutetia]

Thanks for your wise advice.

Unfortunately I did click on that one link before I realised what this was about (what got me is the words they had selected to use for their "listing" - not what I would want to appear if it were legitimate).

But... I will refrain from making things any worse.

[howard]

I just got my first two solicitations today on domains which have been active since a year ago last November.

The text of the email is the same as above. The return path for each is
<editor@WWW-GOTO.COM>.

The "to" field in each is blank, but the source code reveals they were sent to "webmaster@..." in both cases.

They have paid and "free" directory services. The "unsubscribe" link in the solicitation email is followed by an address in Santa Monica, Ca.

This is an idle curiosity at this point. I think they are fishing.

[Brisguy52]

"Urgent! Please update your [MY DOMAIN] listing by Friday, December 31, 2004 so we can continue to list you (Adv)"
..........................

This is straight out of the guide to better spamming handbook