Web Marketing Strategy Update

Recently, I finally got around to looking at the scripts available for the Firefox plugin, Greasemonkey. I was not expecting what I found.

From the main site:

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML (”user scripts”) to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page’s style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page’s design or interaction.

For example, you could:

• Make sure that all URLs displayed in the browser are clickable links
• Improve the usability of a site you frequent
• Route around common and annoying website bugs
• Use the Coral content network selectively.

Most of the scripts are fairly innocuous and are designed to help users get more out of various websites.

But MANY are designed soley to strip ads from pages, remove redirects and even change affiliate links.

Here are some examples:

Bloglines Moreover Ad Remover
Description: Get rid of ads in moreover feeds on bloglines
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Ad Blocker
Description: Block advertisements
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

This excerpt of the script shows what ads are blocked:

createOptionInput(appendTo, “Block items from known ad servers”, “blockAdHosts”, true);
createOptionInput(appendTo, “Block items with common banner sizes”, “blockBannerSizes”, true);

// Ad elements:
// – Elements commonly used for ads
// – Blocked ad sources
var AdElements =
{
adTagNames:
[
"a",
"img",
"iframe",
// "script",
"embed",
"object"
],

blockedSrcs: new RegExp(
[
// Paths
"//ads\.",
"/ad/",
"/adclick", // "/adclick/" and "/adclick.php" both seen in the wild
"/ads/",
"/advertisers/",
// "/banners/",
"/klipmart/",
"/sponsors/",

// Filenames
"ad_banner",

// Hosts
"2mdn\.net",
"clk\.about\.com",
"z\.about\.com/0/ip/",
"adbrite\.com",
"addynamix\.com",
"adknowledge\.com",
"adlegend\.com",
"adlog\.com\.com",
"adserver\.com",
"adsonar\.com",
"advertising\.com",
"atdmt\.com",
"atwola\.com",
"blogads\.com",
"casalemedia\.com",
"centrport\.net",
"creatives\.as4x\.tmcs\.net", // CitySearch
"cl\.cnn\.com/ctxtlink", // CNN contextual links
"directorym\.com",
"doubleclick\.net",
"emarketmakers\.com",
"falkag\.net",
"fastclick\.net",
"feedstermedia\.com",
"mads\.gamespot\.com",
"gms1\.net",
"googlesyndication\.com",
"hitbox\.com",
"industrybrains\.com",
"insightexpress\.com",
"intellitxt\.com",
"kanoodle\.com",
"klipmart\.com",
"kliptracker\.com",
"linkshare\.com",
"click\.linksynergy\.com",
"maxserving\.com",
"msads\.net",
"rad\.msn\.com",
"pointroll\.com",
"primaryads\.com",
"qksrv\.net",
"rightmedia\.com",
"adsremote\.scripps\.com",
"serving-sys\.com",
"spylog\.com",
"trafficmp\.com",
"tribalfusion\.com",
"vpptechnologies\.com", // Intellitxt
// "public\.wsj\.com/marketing/",
"yieldmanager\.com", // Rightmedia
"ystweb\.com",
"zedo\.com"
].join(”|”)),

blockedIds:
[
"adbrite",
"adstrip", // kuro5hin.org's blogads
"cnnTravelot", // cnn.com
"overtureIframe", // wsj.com
"spons-links" // forbes.com
],

var Banners =
{
knownSizes:
[
new Dimension(728, 90), // Leaderboard
new Dimension(468, 60), // Full banner
new Dimension(392, 72), // Full banner w/ nav bar
new Dimension(234, 60), // Half banner

new Dimension(120, 240), // Vertical banner
new Dimension(240, 400), // Vertical rectangle
new Dimension(180, 150), // Rectangle
new Dimension(300, 250), // Medium rectangle
new Dimension(336, 280), // Large rectangle

new Dimension(300, 600), // Half-page ad
new Dimension(160, 600), // Wide skyscraper
new Dimension(120, 600), // Skyscraper

new Dimension(250, 250), // Square pop-up
new Dimension(125, 125), // Square button
// new Dimension(120, 90), // Button 1
// new Dimension(120, 60), // Button 2
new Dimension(88, 31) // Micro button

So, if your site has ads that fit ANY of the above criteria, a Firefox user with this script installed won’t see any of them. On top of that, the script is of course easily modified to add addtional hosts or ad dimensions, etc.

Here’s some more Firefox extensions designed to deceive:

AmazonAffiliate
Description: Exchanges Amazon affiliate ID’s with your own (claim the Amazon links on websites.)

Dont Require Email
Description: Pre-fill a fake email address on WordPress / MT / TypePad comment forms
Written By: Adam Vandenberg

Bloglines FeedBurner Ads Remover
Description:
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Economist Links
Description: Rewrites Economist links to ask for the printer (ad-free) page
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Flyertalk Adremove
Description: Removes Sponsored Links ads in threads on Flyertalk
Written By: Guttorm Aase

FoxNews Ad Remover
Description: Removes the top banner, middle banner and middle right box ads.
Written By: Vlajbert

FoxNews Friendly Video
Description: Removes the video ads.
Written By: Vlajbert

Gizmodo Hide Ads
Description: Hides ads on Gizmodo.com Pages
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Good Will Press
Description: v0.2 – Replaces popup window JavaScript with ordinary links and provides easy access to swf files for direct downloading.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Google Ad Remover
Description: Removes ads from Google search result pages
Written By: Max Kueng

Hide Gmail Ads
Description: (2005-04-03) Hides Gmail content-sensitive ads.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Hide Google AdSense Ads
Description: (2005-03-30) Hides Google AdSense Ads iframes anywhere.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

IMDb Image Deblocker
Description: removes transparent gif that blocks saving some IMDb images
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

IntelliTxt Disabler
Description: Disable Vibrant Media IntelliTxt automatic text links, like on AnandTech.com. Update: 2005-08-03
Written By: Steven Barnett

Iskon AdRemover
Description: Remove the ads from Iskon pages
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Launch Fox
Description: Open all Yahoo Launch videos in WMP, commercial free
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

music.download.com ad remover
Description: Removes ads at the top of music.download.com
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

New York Times single page format
Description: Rewrites New York Times links to ask for single page format; derived from neugierig.org version
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

New York Times Convert Popups
Description: Rewrites New York Times links to convert javascript popups to regular links; derived from neugierig.org version
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

NYPost Ad Remover
Description: Removes the story inline ad.
Written By: Vlajbert

OnlyLady News Ad Remover
Description: Removes the ads in the pages of onlylady.com
Written By: Roger

Penny Arcade strip page ad remover
Penny Arcade sticks that ad above each strip, right? And you have to scroll down a bit to see the strip unless you have a huge screen. I hate having to scroll when going through comic archives. This kills that ad.
Written By: Jay Kominek

PopCap Ad Remover
Description: Removes video ads just before game start.
Written By: Vlajbert

pornCrapFilter
Filter out everything on TGP pages, showing just the images that are linked to other images (i.e., the thumbnail images). Removes everything else on the document. Filter porn sites to only list the interesting stuff (images!)
Written By: ydant

Pure Google
Description: Cleans Google’s interface of extraneous links and text.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Prefetch Google Ads
Description: Prefetches Google Ad Links
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Idea is to generate clicks on all the ads. This robs advertisers, and risks the webmaster being banned by Google AdSense, which is prresumably the point.

RaagaAdSkipper
Audio ads gets inserted whenever songs are played from Raaga.com. This script skips Raaga audio ads.
Written By: Saravana Kumar

Remove CNN ad column
Description: Remove the “ad column” from the right hand side of cnn.com
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Remove ads from TitanTv
Description: Remove ads and “featured channels” from Titan TV’s grid
Written By: David Twist

Remove ads from ARS News
Description: Remove the “ad columns” from the ARS News Articles
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Remove IMDB ad column
Description: Remove the “ad column” from the right hand side of imdb.com
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Removes link adverts
Description: Removes the advert pages getting in the way of uComics strips
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Salon Premium Pass
Description: Allows you to visit Salon without having to view the prem-pass ad.
Written By: Vlajbert

Salon Ad Remover
Description: Removed inline story ads from Salon.
Written By: Vlajbert

Skip Top Frame Ads
Description: Skip top frame ads and go directly to the second frame
Written By: LouCypher

Sina News Ad Remover
Description: Removes the box ads in the news page and cleans up the start page of news.sina.com.cn.
Written By: Roger

Something Awful Forums – AdStripper
Description: Gets rid of the registration ad for the Something Awful Forums
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Sohu News Ad Remover
Description: Removes the box ads in the news page and cleans up the start page of news.sohu.com
Written By: Roger

SMH RemoveAds
This script removes advertisements and other clutter from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age web pages. They are much nicer pages to view with less content on the screen detracting from the articles.
Written By: Alexander Else

StraitsTimes Ads & Width
Description: Adjust width & remove Ads
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Stright Click (sic)
Description: Click straight through links that just redirect somewhere else (looks for another URL embedded in the link).
Written By: arantius

Stream MP3
Description: Add a link to stream MP3s
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

TimesPagingRemover
Times Group websites (timesofindia.indiatimes.com, economictimes.indiatimes.com) present a story in multiple pages and it is really annoying to click several times to read a single story. TimesPagingRemover script gets the printer friendly page of the article and shows the full article in a single page.
Written By: Saravana Kumar

Unblock Right-Click at Wretch
Description: Wretch blocks three attributes of HTML elements: onDragStart, oncontextmenu and onSelectStart. This script unblocks the three events.

WashingtonPost Auto-Login
Description: If you end up at the WashingtonPost.com login/register page this script will automagically fill in and post the register form for you.

*At first I thought this filled in your own details, but a look at the code shows this is not the case:

setValue( ‘EmailAddr’, t + ‘@mailinator.com’);
setValue( ‘Password’, ‘abc.123′);
setValue( ‘PasswordConfirm’, ‘abc.123′);
setValue( ‘Zip1′, ‘12345′);
setRadio( ‘Gender’, 0);
setValue( ‘DobYear’, ‘1965′);
setOption( ‘JOB_TITLE’, ‘BOSS’);
setOption( ‘PRIM_RESP’, ‘IT’);
setOption( ‘INDUSTRY’, ‘INTERNET’);
setOption( ‘COMP_SIZE’, ‘SIZE_1′);

Written By: Vlajbert

Washington Post RSS Query String Remover
Description: removes query string from pages loaded from Washington Post RSS
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

WSJ Ad Remover
Description: Removes selected ads from WSJ.
Written By: Vlajbert

Yahoo! Mail Ad Remover
Description: Removes ads from the free version of Yahoo! Mail
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Yahoo Groups Sponsored Links Remover
Description: Removes Yahoo Sponsored Links from Yahoo Groups
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

Yahoo Ad Removal
Description: Gets rid of all ads on Yahoo (the ones that show up after using AdBlock to get rid of the graphical ads)
Written By: DesertFox

Yahoo Group Interstitial Skipper
Description: When a Yahoo Groups message inserts an interstitial, automatically move on to the next page.
Written By: Mysteriously Unknown

_blank Must Die
Replaces annoying _blank targets in hyperlinks with a _self target. It replaces target attributes containing _blank as well as values like blank, _new, new, _neu and neu.

All the scripts above are freely available for plug-and-play installation by every Firefox user. The number of scripts like this will only grow, unless people look at them in the same light as porn or warez, and put them in the same generally unacceptable bracket when it comes to providing hosting and promotion services.

What I want is a script I can put on my site that detects this sort of thing and redirects to a page saying, “ENTRY DENIED! We have detected you are blocking advertisements on our site. The creation and maintenance of this site is not free. Web hosting costs money. Our time designing, writing, editing, etc., is not free. The advertisements pay for the site. If you refuse to accept that, we refuse to accept you!”

To the users of these and similar scripts, my message is:

This is just like spamming, only the other side of the coin.

My website is MINE. It belongs to ME, not you.

Understand?

It appears on your computer by your choice — I don’t put it there, you go out and fetch it.

You wouldn’t visit it unless you found it valuable in some way.

That value costs me time and money to produce. And if that wasn’t enough, I even pay for hosting, etc., so you can download and view my site on your computer for FREE.

I don’t charge you to access my site.

Instead, the revenue from ads PAYS FOR YOU.

Now I don’t mind if you want to change the fonts or appearance of the site to something you find more appealing, but when you block the ads, you cheat me out of my income. Even worse, it’s money that wouldn’t have come out of your own pocket anyway. That kind of mean, begrudging mentality is sickening.

The fact is that without income from advertising sales, newspapers, magazines, television and much of the Internet would probably not exist at all, because if consumers had to bear the true full cost of production, they would be too expensive for mass consumption, and therefore exponentially more expensive to produce.

Where would the world’s favourite search engine be without advertising? It either wouldn’t exist, you’d have to pay to use it, or all the websites would have to pay for inclusion; which without advertising, would in turn have to charge you for access, sell you something or be goverment funded from taxes.

Advertising revenue is the oil that keeps the wheels of popular media turning.

I came across Blog Submitter Pro 7.0 through an emailed affiliate recommendation. The site headline reads:

“New Blog Submission Software Takes TOTAL DOMINATION To A Whole New Level, And Allows Complete Control Over Any Market and Any Product You Sell. — Renders All Other Marketing Methods Totally Useless by Comparison”

Quite a claim, eh? Totally ridiculous hype of course. But that seems to be the norm these days. My issue is with the software itself.

I might wear a grey hat sometimes, and Google may think I’m a bit thin in places, but even to me it’s clear that this new, “killer marketing app” crosses the line.

The goal is innocuous enough: make comments on blog posts related to the topic (or in this case, simply keywords) that your site covers. In doing so increase the value of your site in the eyes of Google (and other search engines).

The method of attaining it is the problem.

Let me ask you a question. What is the Comments function on a blog for?

For commenting on the post, right? To build on it. Add opinions. Ask questions. Perhaps create discussion.

It’s not a name card or billboard service for people to come along and say (according to the creator this is what he himself sets the software to post):

- – - – - – - – - -
“Hey, you have a great blog here! I’m definitely going to bookmark you!

I have a <.a href="http://www.my-domain.com/my-page.htm">##KEYWORD##<./a.> site/blog. It pretty much covers ##KEYWORD## related stuff.

Come and check it out if you get time ”
- – - – - – - – - -

I must have missed the bit that said the software automatically created bookmarks for you too! But lying that aside, can you imagine what it would be like if everyone made comments consisting of nothing more than this kind of self promotional junk?

Picture an automated process designed to post this stuff on random blogs, wherever the software finds any of the keywords in its user defined list, and you have the general idea of what this wonderful new marketing tool does.

I know some “big name” marketers are promoting this thing, but I like to call a spade a spade.

THIS IS A SPAM TOOL

In case you can’t see it, let me explain why.

First of all, the blog is the property of the blog owner. Just like their email inbox. Just like their physical mail box. It’s their territory and they make the rules of entry.

Blog owners give permission for people to post comments in order to add value to the site content for other visitors, or enable interaction, etc.

That’s the rule.

It might be unwritten. But it’s as plain and well understood as the rule that you don’t vandalise another persons property.

Blog owners solicit comments that add value to the blog and visitor experience. And as an added bonus, they offer a link back to the site of the comment author (for which the ultimate reason is again the idea of adding to user experience).

They don’t solicit self promotional ads that have no intrinsic value to the blog and exist solely for the purpose of obtaining a targeted link.

And as the web site selling this software makes perfectly clear, they are indeed nothing but blatant ads:

“When you post your ads on all of these blogs …”

So, putting it another way:

The comments this software sends out are Unsolicited Ads. In bulk. For commercial gain.

Sound familiar?

That’s because it’s SPAM.

I don’t object to you commenting on a post to get a targeted link, as long as you provide value in return.

“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is the way it works. Just like the republication of articles, only a lot less work for the person getting the link. But if you aren’t willing to play fair, you’re not welcome on my blog!

But apparently (based on extensive research, no doubt), I’m in a minority here: most blog owners are happy to be spammed. In fact, they are GLAD!

From the sales page:
“Believe it or not, the people who run the vast majority of blogs that you post on will actually very much welcome your post.”

Wow! Really?

And there’s even an email excerpt to prove it:
“I have about 20 blogs and have never received a single comment. I followed the link out of curiosity – Even though I knew it was a marketer just wanting a link back to their site – I just half smiled and thought ‘cool!’ It doesn’t really bother me in the slightest. I’m sure that Mr. Dad & Mrs. Mum would feel maybe a little bit important that someone actually ‘bothered’ to come to their website and say -’Hey, great website, keep it up -check out my site when you are free.”

Oh yes puulease Mr. Marketer! Come and post your spam comment on my site. I was feeling SO unappreciated and insecure. I feel MUCH better now I’ve been noticed by your automated software!

There’s actually a page on comment spamming on the site, which begins:
“This term, although a fiction, is a well known and widely accepted concept among the internet community.”

A fiction? A false belief that’s held to be true because it’s expedient to do so? Of course it is! Silly me. (See [comment spam->http://www.answers.com/comment%20spam] for more on this “fiction”)

It continues:
“I built this software to post exclusively to blogger.com blogs so that no one can ever legitimately accuse any Blog Submitter Pro user of ‘comment spamming’ their blog.”

Key here is the twisted definition of “legitimately.” You’ll see how in a minute, but suffice to say the implied meaning is analogous to not being able to legitimately accuse someone of sending spam email, if you haven’t switched on the spam filter provided by your ISP.

“Blogger.com is very well aware of Blog Submitter Pro! They know exactly who we are, exactly what we do, and exactly why we do it…. And They Do Not Mind One Little Bit!!!!”

That’s a bold claim. How do they know that? Did Blogger write and say so?

The fact that visible action has not (yet) been initiated does not mean Blogger think it’s fine. They could well be considering what steps to take in relation to the scale of the problem, and assessing whether the problem can be controlled without direct intervention, which would be the least favourable option to Google (owners of Blogger.com). And this of course doesn’t take into account the other side of the coin, which is of much more concern to Google — the effect on SERPS.

I guess that means Blogger also don’t mind users setting up lot’s of bogus accounts in order to trick its parent company, as suggested on another page:
“And if you don’t want google to realize that some specific user/pass combo has been posting non-stop 24 hours per day for the last “X” days, it’s a good idea to setup a few blogger accounts and let the program ramdomly select a user/pass combo to post with.”

Back on the comment spam page:
“Instead of making themselves out to be yet another internet cop, they (blogger) opted to leave the blog owner with the option of whether or not they would welcome and or accept posts to their blog from automated software.”

They have done no such thing. They have given blog owners the option of using a [CAPTCHA->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha] to block posts from automated software.

As Blogger says about using the CAPTCHA option:
“What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog …”

That is not at all the same as welcoming automated spam posts. Not preventing something does not mean I welcome or want to accept it. By this logic, not locking my car means that I want it to be stolen.

“This means that every single blog that our software posts to, has by default, been given permission from the individual blog owner to do so.”

Again, that’s totally untrue.

At the risk of repeating myself, not actively preventing something does not mean I am granting permission to do it. If I leave a cash box open on my desk when I leave the room, I am not granting co-workers permission to pocket the money, even though I have not prevented them from doing so.

The truth is there are many reasons for not using a CAPTCHA. People don’t like filling them in. Some blog owners are concerned using them will reduce comments. They can slow down page load on a slow site and lengthen the comment process. The blog owner may not realise the significance or need. None of these reasons mean, “Yes, I want automated software to post spam comments on my blog.”

Here’s another gem from the software site:
“Known Annoyances::: 1. Low life’s
There are still low life’s on the internet who try to jam popups down your throat, and they hit you with ‘alert hell’ … (upsetting the software)”

So apparently I’m a low-life for having pop-ups on MY site, that belongs to ME and which no one is forced to visit, but people trying to spam MY site with useless comments to gain some benefit for THEM at my expense are ok? Yeah, right on!

Thankfully though, for the moment at least the software only targets Blogger.com blogs. Which is good in a way ‘cos that means it’s going to doubly annoy Google. And footprint or no footprint, when Google sees artificially skewed SERPS all over the place they will do something. As will Yahoo and MSN. Because it’s their bread and butter. And they have masses of data to spot and compare anomalies with.

Another positive aspect is that people will go at this like crazy, creating hundreds of links in a short space of time, oblivious to the alarm bells they are setting off that will most likely leave their sites ranking nowhere after a fleeting spell of glory.

There is also the “no follow” tag, although interestingly, regarding it the product creator claims that, “in having a large number of backlinks, not only is it no longer crucial, it truly borders on insignificants [sic].”

However, [Google say->http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html], “when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.”

Whilst [Yahoo's take->http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000069.html] is, “By adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to hyperlinks, webmasters and weblog owners can tell search engines that the links are effectively untrusted.”

And [MSN say->http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx], “Any link with this tag will indicate to a crawler it is not necessarily approved by this page and shouldn’t be followed nor contribute weight for ranking.”

But even IF the product creator’s claims are true, it simply means there will be a move to a higher level of protection in future, with links automatically routed through blind redirects or something, or perhaps the ability to add links or comments removed entirely. The incentive to spam will have gone, but it will be at the expense of genuine users.

Someone who spends time and energy to post valuable content on my site deserves a little something back, and this inter-linking is the core of the whole community aspect of blogs. Another case of a selfish few spoiling a good thing for everyone else in the interest of their short-term gain, just like email.

Don’t be taken in by the spiel. Blog Submitter Pro is a spam tool. And if you use it, I’m sorry but that makes you a spammer.