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Mildly Infuriating @lemmy.world

Mr_Blott @lemmy.world

12mo ago

This fucking scourge, when you own a business. Even if it's the top result in a search in your area

48 comments

SEO services, what scum.
That said, if you need a website redesign, I know a company. (/s)
- Haven't you read all those concerned emails? OP's web design is great! 😂
  
  I made it myself with no experience, and after two bottles of wine
  I can assure you, sir or madam, it is utter fucking shite
- Yeah, we can thank those assholes for searches being less useful than they could be.
  
  They should all be sued into oblivion for false advertising. They're not optimizing search engines. They're shitting the up.

I took my phone number off my Google profile and the spam calls dropped off immediately. I do custom work and only locally so I don't want to cast a wide net.
I wrote my number on a piece of paper and took a picture of it and uploaded that. A low tech captcha.
- I'm lucky enough to have laws against spam calling, so it's just emails
  
  If you're looking for a way to cut down on these, you might want to try using a contact form on your website to conceal your email address. It'll still forward submissions to your email but without revealing your address. Most decent web hosts with site editor tools will provide that kind of functionality without requiring any coding/development knowledge. That said, your existing address is pretty much toast at this point so you'll need a new one regardless.
  If these messages are being sent to a domain contact via public registration info, well, there's your problem. Those contacts should either be burner email addresses or be hidden behind private domain registration.

I get these all the time, so I feel your pain.
And then you get the follow-up... "I wanted to make sure you didn't ignore the last three emails I sent..." blah, blah, blah. Go swallow glass!

Yes hello, I'd like to buy your 2 million dollar business for 10 bucks.
- You forgot to add 'kindly' peppered in so much that it seems hostile
  
  Do the needful
- The company I work for is mainly an internet presence with a valuation in excess of $100 million. The number of emails we get offering somewhere around $5000 for our domain name is absurd…

even if it's the top result
I feel like being the top result is the primary reason you get this spam.
- Nah, I get spam for my personal website where I host projects etc and also use as a convenience domain... It's pretty clear that I don't actively want to be indexed (if they wanna do it then sure but I'm not sure what they're searching for) and yet they're still talking about how they can get me more sales for my... Open source tokeniser and instruction set I guess?
  
  Do you have your email published on the website somewhere? Could just be because it's out in the open where all the bots can scrape it. They don't know what's on the website; only that this email is associated with one.

One of them led with “dear” though. Are you sure it’s not just your grandma just trying to help you?
- Aye if my granny was Nigerian!
  
  It's possible. Rough estimate about 226 million people have Nigerian grandmas.

I work in procurement for a fairly large company. The number of random Chinese companies that send me emails, and the random cold calls I get drive me up the wall. Like dude, if I'm qualifying new vendors, I sure as shit ain't doing it based on a cold call or random sales email. FOH.
- Same.
  But, you answer your phone? 😎 Nobody I want to talk to ever calls me anymore. (That's mostly good.)
  My favorite spammers are the ones who I explicitly tell "I'm not interested in doing business with you, but will keep your info on file...yada"...that double down. Like, FFS I make shampoo. There is ZERO chance of me buying circuit board subassemblies, vending machines, or livestock. Now if you've got a line on polyquat surfactants...call me.
  
  No, the only time I answer is usually when I'm expecting an urgent call from a vendor and I see a random number call so I go oh hey, maybe this is them, then I get to deal with some sales pitch. I usually am a bit of a dick to them and just cut them off mid sentence. "Is this a sales call? I only answered because I was expecting an important call. I need to go."

If you have admin portal access to write transport rules, I recommend writing a rule that has the server reply with a 550 5.7.1 Delivery Refused error. Trigger it based on the keyphrases "top of Google search" and "affordable SEO" to start with.
- Pffffffffftt I was barely able to make a website without actually accidentally uploading a picture of my balls mate 😂
  
  If you want, you could use GMail filters to delete those emails automatically. Here's how:
  click the engine button (settings), then "see all settings", then "filters and blocked addresses".
  click "create a new filter". Add "top of Google search" to the field "has the words", leave other fields blank.
  click "create filter", then check the "delete it" box, then "create filter" again.
  repeat steps 2-3 for other shit that SEO spam is likely to mention.
  Important: never use as a filter anything that legitimate users might reasonably say. Only things that you're fairly certain to come from a spammer.
  EDIT: I repeated two steps without noticing it. My bad.
  
  Pretty sure that's desert terrain.

Yes! Hello, please you are wondering how can you access of wonderful database of kindly line producers for your business sector! Please kindly to contact our emails below for the complete listung with our discounted rates.
Romantically Yours,
笨蛋
Kingfuck Limited, Guangzhou Guangdong

I have access to the email of a rescue I work for, like dogs and cats. The amount of these we get is ridiculous. We don't want to be the top of google! We already get 7 million emails asking us to take animals or idiots looking for a free puppy for christmas!

This is why I believe cold emailing doesn't work 😅😅

The ones selling health insurance are awful too. No dude I don’t want your trash ass probably fake insurance coverage that you’re trying to sell me from a spoofed number.

I occasionally get acquisition emails for a Roku channel I develop/maintain that are of a similar ilk. They always brag about how many channels they've acquired, which I've never understood.

I wrote an email service specifically to prevent this. It’s not ready for businesses yet (because I don’t have custom domain support yet), but check it out if you’re interested: https://port87.com
- ~~Looks like a cool service. I may have missed it, but is your privacy policy linked anywhere on your site?~~ (I'm old - my eyes missed the small text)
  And how do you get an invite code?
  
  You can sign up on the waitlist and I’ll send one to you. I usually send them out during the morning (Pacific time) to everyone on the list. The waitlist is just there so I can ramp up users slowly. Once I figure out the limits of the current servers, I’ll know how to configure automatic provisioning, and I won’t need a waitlist.

I don't even own a business, and I get that all the time. I just have a custom domain for my email.

Are you sure you don't need a website redesign? My company can get you on the right track!

Ugh, yes. The joys of small businesses, alongside the rare spam call about “funding.” Thankfully these emails all go to my spam filter now! But it is super annoying.

I worked with a startup once where we had individual company emails and had a good giggle at how different the spam is compared to personal stuff! Mostly in our case it was dubious offers of office space, furniture and other such services.

Hi! I was checking your website.

I'm not alone. Thank you.

I don't even own a business and I get this madness. I was a CTO at a company that was big enough to get attention; then it sold and I left. But I still get lots of proposals for ways people can help me take that company "to the next level." They even send them to my new work email address where I'm not in the c-suite.

48 comments