How the hell do you stop spam from SEO companies??

[Ryan000001]

To say I am frustrated is the understatement of the century! My company Email is connected to my Gmail account and I am being absolutely inundated with spam from foreign SEO and Internet Marketing companies.

Unsubscribing is obviously not an option as they just create another Gmail account and continue to fill my inbox. It's driving me nuts! How on earth can you stop this?? I know they are just desperate for business but its become a real issue for me.

Grrrr!

 

[Love2travel]

I never unsubscribe. Most of the time those small sites now know it's a live email address and they sell it to others.
You can filter out emails that have the word "Seo" to go straight to trash.

 

[fisicx]

Like L2T says, just set up some filters and the problem goes away.

Adding spam catchers to your website forms helps as well.

 

[nada_book14]

I think spam filter is not work well on gmail. More spam comes continuous t mail even we have on our spam filter. this may not in One or Two some time they comes in Bulk. They waste their and also our time.

 

[fisicx]

In which case, just stop using gmail. If you have a company email account you don't even need a third party provider.

Especially one who tracks your email traffic in order to target advertising.

 

[NickGrogan]

unsubscribing doesn't tell them anything, but they probably won't listen either. If you send an email to an invalid/not live address it will bounce on most hosts, so they know already.

Given the minimal cost of send each email, know that the address is live or not has almost no value. If 10-20% of emails sent are undelivered the cost per email is still almost non existent.

How many spam emails do you get per day? I get around 100.

 

[fisicx]

How many spam emails do you get per day? I get around 100.

Not one.

They all get filtered out long before they get to my email client.

 

[NickGrogan]

Sorry, I meant in your spam folder. I only have 2 or 3 get to the inbox.

 

[BusinessDeli]

But don't you want more clients this year? They can increase rankings of your website in search engines!

I don;t get enough to bother with a filter (yet) so just hit the delete key.

 

[fisicx]

Sorry, I meant in your spam folder. I only have 2 or 3 get to the inbox.

Just a couple. I don't publish my email address and a I have a junk account I use to sign up for stuff. This means only the people I want to be in contact with get my email address.

 

[AllUpHere]

Do spammers sometimes gain addresses from whois data in bulk. The most spam I get it to the adresss put down as the domain owners contact address on WHOIS. Its not an address that is published anywhere, and their is no website on the domain.

They either get the address in this way, or Vidahost are selling addresses. It's the only 2 places the e-mail address is known.

 

[NickGrogan]

Whois data is readily downloadable for most country codes, free or fairly cheaply.

 

[The Byre]

Great cold call conversation yesterday from some company called Nova, or something like that -

Me: Hello

CC: I am from Nova-Something and I would like to talk to the person that deals with websites in your company.

Me: That's probably why you were put through to me.

CC: Well, we are calling about your website, which we found on page one of Google using the key words suitable for your business and we feel that you would benefit from our new targeted search engine optimisation tools. We estimate that you are missing out on at least 200 hits a day. Those 200 hits could be translated into new business and I assume that you could use that extra business.

Me: Sorry, what was the name of your company again?

CC: Nova Something.

Me: And what key words would I use to find your company?

CC: Well, er, that would be, er, well . . .

Me: You used the expression " targeted search engine optimisation tools" so how about "targeted search engine optimisation tools UK"?

CC: Well, er, I suppose that could, er . . .

Me: Perhaps you could suggest some others?

CC: Well, er, I suppose they would be, well, that should be OK.

Me: (I type those words into Google) targeted - search - engine - optimisation - tools - UK, let's see - hmm, no, nothing on page one. Page two - no, nothing there. Let's have a look at page three, no nothing there. So page four should be - no. Still nothing! Page five - I can't see your company there either.

CC: Well what we are trying to get across is . . .

Me: Now just a minute. We are on page one, you've said that yourself. You are not on the first five pages. I suppose I could look further, perhaps you appear on page six, or ten, or twenty, or somewhere. But you are trying to sell me SEO tools - that me on page one and you, God knows where, perhaps page twenty, perhaps nowhere. Can you see what is wrong with that?

(Cold Caller hangs up.)

 

[MASSEY]

Yeah im a little sick of these.

Unsubscribing from spam doesn't seem to work, i unsubbed from the web marketing group who continually send out emails full of misleading junk yet they still send them.

Think i will look into filters.

 

[Mystro]

Sometimes just replying is enough for them to add to a list of live mails and sell on, I add a autoforward which sends a mail delivery failure they kind of take yo off the list then.

If you cant do that the best bit is to just ignore

 

[andygambles]

If you're using gmail just hit the spam button. Help Gmail learn more what you feel is spam.

 

[yottacom]

Since you use gmail, start creating a filter with multiple recurring words like:

(“unsubscribe” | “link wheel” | "link building service" | "dear sir/madam")

and tell gmail to
a) skip the inbox
b) mark it as spam

update the rule in order to get a larger amount of emails. The pipe "|" means "or".

 

[Ryan000001]

Thank you guys! Have set up appropriate filters now and looking much cleaner already.

 

[GoranaSmith]

Even i get occasional mails from asian web development companies. I guess i subscribed to a newsletter about web development, and since that day i am getting these mails from foreign countries.

I am not using Gmail so i have to personally delete them. Is there any way i could block some domains on Outlook?

 

[yottacom]

Outlook has filters too!
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/outlook-help/create-a-rule-HP005242897.aspx

 

[Soph13]

ThanksRyan000001for asking this.

Great advise from all, I've also set up some filters.

 

[paulears]

When I have to give an email on a sign up, I use one of my web site addresses that has a catchall - and use the web site I signed up with, like [email protected]. That way I can tell who flogged my details to the spammers and then it's quite simple to waste their time in return.

 

[Poppy Design]

I dont personally use gmail but as a design company we do tend to get emails everyday from India (mainly) trying to sell SEO and web design...
I add them to the junk folder and they keep coming - I know you can alter the email inbox spam level but need to be careful you dont block genuine emails then!

 

[MASSEY]

I think another way would be to block the whole of India, China, and maybe Thai from viewing your website. It's probably only a bit of code in the htaccess.

That way they can't get your mail from your site.

 

[senses]

Put your company account on a hosted solution, such as a hosted exchange, gmail for business etc.

If you dont want spam, pay for the managed solution! Its like £3pm!

 

[yottacom]

I think another way would be to block the whole of India, China, and maybe Thai from viewing your website. It's probably only a bit of code in the htaccess.

That way they can't get your mail from your site.

Yes, because proxies and remote servers are only a figment of our imagination

i can scrape a thousand email per hour using my virtual server which is located in UK, but which i can remotely access from any part of the world.

 

[money road]

I get spam emails as well. As 'unsubscribe 'does not exist at all. Someone is smart enough to scrape or buy email list--> setup private email server and send from 2 to 10 emails every day. Emails is in plain text with short sentences and lot of links. If I try to send email back- it just does not work! Thats very annoying marketing module. .

 

[Social Management Pro's]

Do you have a decent captcha? This usually stops most of it!

 

[money road]

Do you have a decent captcha? This usually stops most of it!

I think now days only captcha like pictures ar logical question can work well
Any simple generated text can be read and answered by soft like deathbycapcha or plenty others

 

[StevePoster]

I'm wondering why these individuals and SEO companies are still using this kind of email spamming and distributes to the listed emails it doesn't matter to them if it is related or not.

 

[Social Management Pro's]

I'm wondering why these individuals and SEO companies are still using this kind of email spamming and distributes to the listed emails it doesn't matter to them if it is related or not.

I wonder this myself. They must get some sort of return from it.

The amount I have in my inbox is ridiculous!

 

[office-mover]

I'm wondering why these individuals and SEO companies are still using this kind of email spamming and distributes to the listed emails it doesn't matter to them if it is related or not.

Because, unfortunately, people still fall for it. Most small businesses don't understand SEO, and the damage these companies can do - they just fall for the hype and promises.

 

[money road]

I'm wondering why these individuals and SEO companies are still using this kind of email spamming and distributes to the listed emails it doesn't matter to them if it is related or not.

It means- spam works- people click links, drive non targeted traffic, or purchase products- othervise I can not understand why somebody bothers with this.

 

[MASSEY]

I get spam emails as well. As 'unsubscribe 'does not exist at all. Someone is smart enough to scrape or buy email list--> setup private email server and send from 2 to 10 emails every day. Emails is in plain text with short sentences and lot of links. If I try to send email back- it just does not work! Thats very annoying marketing module. .

I think i may start making email addresses images instead of text, to help avoid this in future.

I seem to get a lot of enquiries that are manually entered, as the contact form is too sophisitcated for robots, which really shocks me. Some people offering SEO are incredibly persistent.

It must be working in terms of reward for effort or they wouldn't keep doing it.

 

[NickGrogan]

I think i may start making email addresses images instead of text, to help avoid this in future.

Making it harder for customers to contact you, in order to avoid some spam, seems a little excessive.

Most emails are not scraped from individual sites anyway...

 

[Chinavasion]

I usually like to read them, and laugh how bad it is written.

 

[The Byre]

I usually like to read them, and laugh how bad it is written.

That is a like as wot aught to read 'badly'.

 

[searchangel]

You could try and get Indian IP addresses banned from the site. 99% of spam comes from there.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

You could try and get Indian IP addresses banned from the site. 99% of spam comes from there.

Except they use gmail accounts...

 

[Alan]

I have a special anti-spam gmail account that I use to occasionally to respond to these request, just to see what I get back. What is amazing is I have never actually had a response.

Which leads me to conclude these gmail seo spam emails are just farming live email addresses and trying ( unsuccessfully ) to sell them on as leads. Either that, or they are so busy with 'mugs' they haven't go the time to deal with my 'false' account.