Michael Roebuck's Blog

Last week I posted a quick comment about a recent rash of Google Phishing Emails I have been receiving. I stated that everyone at some time or another has probably received a fake PayPal or Credit Card email stating to log into your account immediately or else it will be shut down or something like that. These are from the bad people who want your login information so they can buy stuff with your money. I was a bit confused why someone would want access to your Google Adwords account because anything you link to could be easily tracked down. One of my clients fell victim to this fraud and I'm still confused as to why.

My client had an ad group created for "Ringtones." His settings were adjusted to accept a $25,000 daily limit with each keyword set at $18.00 max CPC. The fraudster then bought dozens of ringtone related keywords. The puzzling part was the actual ad was jibberish and the desitination URL was an invalid domain. In fact, it was available to purchase. The fraudster was either testing something out or just had too much free time on his hands.

Either way, we worked with Google to fix everything, but the only thing the fraudster really did was waste several hours of time.

I'm not going to post screen shots of the ad or what everything looked like as I don't want to give this guy credit, but we did get the clients password changed and everything seems to be running smoothly now.

So... What did we learn? Change your passwords to something not easily guessed or figured out and most of all, never click on a link to log into your account from anyone! Actually go to the website and login. I would like to think that if your account is about to be shut off, the company would put some kind of message on the site once you logged in without having to click on any links within an email.

For your reference, below are copies of 3 different Google Spoof emails that I have received:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Google Adwords Customer, Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information.
To activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.

In order to activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.
Pease sign into your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update
your billing information.

Once your account is reactivated and your billing information has been processed,
any your ads and campaigns can begin running immediately on Google.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google Adwords Team



Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information. We will reactivate you account after you update your billing information. In order to reactivate your account, please sign it to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update your billing informatio



Dear AdWords Customer,

The ads in this account are not running. All other account activity has been stopped.
Any edits you make here will take effect only if you reactivate the account.
If you would like to reactivate your account, please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your billing information.

Labels: adwords, google, phishing

I just wanted to write a quick post pertaining to a rash of Google Phishing emails I've been receiving lately. Everyone at some time or another has probably received a fake PayPal or Credit Card email stating to log into your account immediately or else it will be shut down or something like that. These are from the bad people who want your login information so they can buy stuff with your money.

Apparently they now want to increase traffic to their websites by writing fake Google Adwords ads from your account. Anyway, whatever the reason, be careful.

Here are copies of 3 different Google Spoof emails that I have received lately:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Google Adwords Customer, Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information.
To activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.

In order to activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.
Pease sign into your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update
your billing information.

Once your account is reactivated and your billing information has been processed,
any your ads and campaigns can begin running immediately on Google.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google Adwords Team



Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information. We will reactivate you account after you update your billing information. In order to reactivate your account, please sign it to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update your billing informatio



Dear AdWords Customer,

The ads in this account are not running. All other account activity has been stopped.
Any edits you make here will take effect only if you reactivate the account.
If you would like to reactivate your account, please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your billing information.

Labels: adwords, google, phishing

Google will be updating it's display URL policy beginning April 1st. This change marks the beginning of a stricter stance on display URLs. No more re-directs or vanity URL's will be allowed. Google states that this policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers.

Basically, the new rules state the display URL will need to match the destination URL. Most exceptions that were allowed before will no longer be approved.

Here are a few examples that will not be approved:

www.Google.co.uk - this URL leads to a different site

www.Gogle.com - this URL simply redirects to www.Google.com

www.Gooogle.com - this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.Google.com
Google will also not allow the use of multiple domains or branding and vanity URLs.

What about Yahoo Tracking URLs?
Google understands that many advertisers utilize tracking URLs within the destination field of their ads. Therefore, if the URL of your landing page matches that of your display URL, your ads will be approved.

For example:
Display URL: www.mydomain.com/widget
Destination URL: http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?yhst1234567+a1B2C3D4E5+widget.html
--> Landing page URL: www.mydomain.com would be acceptable

Display URL: www.mydomain.com/widget
Destination URL: http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?yhst1234567+a1B2C3D4E5+widget.html
--> Landing page URL: http://store.yahoo.com would not be acceptable

Are sub-domains or extra text still acceptable?
Yes, the use of sub-domains and additional text within the display will continue to be acceptable provided the top-level domain matches the URL of your landing page.

For example, display URLs such as the following:
sub.google.com
google.com/extratext
www.google.com/extratext
would all be acceptable for the landing page URL below, as the top-level domain of google.com is matched:
http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous

Finally, note that you don't have to change your ads. Existing ads within your account will not be immediately affected by this change. However, if Google receives complaints regarding specific violations of this policy, they will review and take the appropriate action. (Usually at 5:00pm on a Friday night). I would however, suggest that everyone check their account for potential blatant violations.

For more information regarding the update, look at the Google Blog

Labels: adwords, google, ppc, tracking

A few new features have been announced from Yahoo. One of which spurred this blog entry. I normally don't blog about regular updates as other people already do that. But imagine my surprise when I received my American Express bill and saw several hundred dollars worth of credits! I didn't have to do anything either, it happens automatically. Very Cool!

OPEN from American Express: 5% discount for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and Yahoo! Search Marketing with your American Express Business Card

Through this partnership, small business owners can use their Business Card to automatically reduce their costs of doing business with Yahoo! Search Marketing and Yahoo! Small Business services. Business Cardmembers will receive a 5% discount on Yahoo! Search Marketing's online advertising and promotion services in addition to Yahoo! Small Business's comprehensive, easy to use services, including Web site hosting, e-commerce, business e-mail, and domain name registration.

OPEN Savings is a benefit embedded within all American Express Business Cards. American Express Business Cardmembers simply need to use their credit or charge card for purchases with any OPEN Savings partner to take advantage of discounts. The savings will automatically appear on the Cardmember's monthly statement and can be tracked when accessing an account at www.open.com. OPEN Savings discounts are calculated on the full transaction amount, including any taxes and surcharges. Terms and conditions apply.

Since I mentioned one, I feel obligated to mention another......

American Express CID Codes

The payment gateway that Yahoo! Store uses, First Data Merchant Services (FDMS) Nashville Platform, now supports CID (Card Identification) codes used by American Express credit cards. Using the CID functionally give you added security and can qualify your transactions for better rates from American Express. Merchants who would like to accept American Express as a Payment Method with the CID code on their Stores will need to publish their order settings with the proper risk tool setting once this functionality has been released.

Labels: amex, cid

In an effort to improve security, Yahoo! will be upgrading the pro-forma script (form submission) functionality. If you are using the Yahoo! Form script, this applies to you. Merchants typically use this for newsletter signups, "contact us" forms, or price-quote requests. The pro-forma script security changes will ensure form submissions are properly associated with a store ID and that all email recipients of form submissions are approved. Once the changes are in place, your site will be automatically protected. However, you must take immediate action to use the new approved format for the pro-forma functionality. Otherwise, you may not receive submissions using the old format.

---------------------------------------------
WHAT STEPS DO I NEED TO TAKE?
---------------------------------------------

New URL for form submissions.
The following change will be required within your form tags sent to this script:
<form method="post" action="http://<accountname/yhst1234>.stores.yahoo.net/cgi-bin
/pro-forma">
where "accountname" is your store ID or yhst number. You will need to confirm this revised tag is used for each form sent to this script on your site. After updating the URL for form submissions, you will need to publish your site.

Approved email recipients.
Previously, any names listed within the form as values for owner received the email:
<input type=hidden name="owner" value="me@myname.com">

With this update, merchants must now enter the list of approved form submission recipients in the "Email To" field of the Form Submissions section in the Order Emails page (or the Fax & Email page for Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional merchants). Email addresses should be entered one per line. If you have a form that uses an email address not specified in the "Email To" field, that form submission will not be delivered.

Thank-you URL and Continue-URL under your store domain.
Previously, merchants could specify any URL to take shoppers to for the confirmation page (thankyou-URL) or after leaving the confirmation page (continue-URL):
<input type=hidden name="continue-url" value="http://anydomain.com">

Now merchants will need to specify a page within their store domain to send shoppers to.
<input type=hidden name="continue-url" value="http://merchantdomain.com">

---------------------------------------------
HOW DO I KNOW MY FORMS ARE SET UP CORRECTLY?
---------------------------------------------

If you have active forms on your site but are not receiving form submissions, then you likely have not made all of the required changes.

Confirm your form is submitting to the new URL:
<form method="post" action="http://<accountname>.stores.yahoo.net/cgi-bin/pro-forma">
and that you are using the correct account name.

Ensure that any email address listed in your forms also appears in the "Email To" field on the Order Emails page (Fax & Email for Standard and Professional accounts). You should receive emails of the form submissions to the owner addresses specified in your form, provided you are submitting the form to the new URL and have specified all email addresses.

Ensure your shoppers are being directed to a confirmation page under your domain after submitting the form and after continuing from the confirmation page.

For full details about the newly revised pro-forma functionality, please refer to Yahoo! help documentation.
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/edit/regular
/regular-12.html

Labels: form, script, yahoo

The other day I tried sending an email to a Yahoo! Merchant Professional client and it was promptly returned to me stating the account had been suspended. This concerned me as I maintain the website and wasn't aware of anything. The website was live and working, but why wasn't this particular email address?

I logged into their email control panel and saw a message in red stating the email address had unusual activity and the account was blocked from sending, saving or receiving emails for up to 48 hours.

This was unacceptable as who can be without email for 48 hours? I called Yahoo! and had the engineers take a look around. A little later I received an email stating it was fixed. I responded it wasn't. Time ticked away and eventually I called back and was then advised to delete the over 416,000 unread messages in the account. Basically, my client saved copies of orders, delivery confirmations and apparently everything else that they ever received via email. I deleted the sent mail and few folders containing older confirmations and everything started working again.

Moral of the story.... If you use the webmail feature on Yahoo! Bizmail, delete some email every now and then!

Another Moral..... Deleting 100,000 emails 100 at a time via an Apple iPhone while sitting on the side of the road is not fun.

Labels: bizmail, email, yahoo

I can remember hearing about this mythical $100 laptop and thinking how cool it was. To be able to produce a computer that could be given to the masses. What a cool concept! I joined the chat groups and immediately wanted to buy a bunch of these laptops (at $100 each) to give to the local schools or families that couldn't afford a computer. Unfortunately the computer hadn't been made yet. It was only a concept.

Well, the concept has materialized. Many of you know that I have 5 kids; my wife runs a daycare; we are foster parents; adopted from China; visit and donate to a school in Mexico; basically love kids and want to help every single child we can. So when the opportunity to buy these universal laptops became available, I jumped on it. Partly because I want to help and partly out of curiosity. The plan is to give one to the school I help in Mexico and let the All Web employees determine the fate of the other.

My laptops were delivered yesterday and I started playing. Honestly, I thought they would be a little more user friendly but I don't know the Linux operating system and assume I'm unfairly expecting them to be like Windows.

I was able to get on my secure wireless network at home and surf the net with ease. I made a video with the built in camera and played a few games. I couldn't chat with anyone but was able to find my way around fairly easily. The battery life seems great and the whole thing is extremely lightweight and compact.

I gave the computer to my 6 year old and he had a great time with it. Along with my 16 year old son. Even my daughter was impressed, but only after she could log into MySpace.

My initial blog plan was to review the laptop in detail but decided against it. The program is new and apparently open source so developers can write programs as needed. I'm so excited that this One Laptop Per Child initiative has become a reality that the only thing I can say is praise. Congratulations to Nicholas Negroponte (Founder) and I hope you continue the effort.

Please check out the website at www.laptop.org for more information. This is truly a phenomenal concept and needs the support of everyone.

Labels: laptop, olpc

Cyber Monday. The biggest on-line shopping day, named because this Monday is the on-line equivalent to Black Friday; the largest shopping day of the year. On-line merchants were expecting a great day and we were prepared to make fast web site updates as merchants needed to make quick tweaks and updates to there sites. Unfortunately, Yahoo Merchant Solutions had a hiccup. Or maybe it was a Heart Attack.

I'm not going to bash Yahoo. Others are going to do enough of that for me. We all know Yahoo had issues. We all had a false sense of security and most of all, we all lost money. How much money? It's unknown as of this post, but the Yahoo Shopping Carts were down for most of the day so you can do the math.

What does this mean for Yahoo? Will clients jump ship? I certainly hope not. While this is certainly a problem and serious money has been lost, it is not a regular occurance. We very rarely have problems with Yahoo and they are always operational. I've been monitoring sites every 5 minutes for years now and can only remember one instance where a client site went down because of Yahoo: (Early April, 2004. PAIX telephone line issues.)

I still believe that if we owned our own servers and this happened, we'd be on the phone with outsourced techs trying to resolve it or the one IT person would be trying to figure it out. It would probably take days to resolve and happen more often. I would guess that Yahoo has more than one IT guy and there are probably numerous people with lots of letters after there names working very hard at fixing this. Yes, Yahoo is going through troubled times and yes, this outage is a serious problem, but as a whole, Yahoo has been very stable. Before you jump on the Yahoo bashing wagon which I'm sure will appear, think about all the good things that happen because of Yahoo. It's still early and we won't know the full effects of this problem for a while yet. That aside, I imagine we'll muddle through. Hopefully Yahoo has learned something and this won't happen again and hopefully we'll be able to create some sort of backup system. But think about this: Where else can you get so much with a scalable solution that benefits the small guy? Yes, there is other competition, but there isn't any other like Yahoo!

Don't know what happened to Yahoo? Here is a Link to Bill Hartzers' Blog with links to various news stories.

Labels: black, christmas, cyber, friday, merchant, monday, solutions, thanksgiving, yahoo

Wow! It's been a month since I've uploaded a post. Where does the time go? It's definitely been a busy month and I have several ideas for posts, but time escapes me. My wife and I are still looking for a house and that seems to be taking up most evenings. We really don't want to build, but because she runs a home business, most new subdivisions restrict what she can do. Anyway, that's a blog post in itself and should be titled something about why I don't drink because buying a house will certainly make you start!

Anyway, A couple new features at Yahoo! that you need to know about. The new Cross Sell feature and the Keyword Finder feature. Both are wonderful tools that will save you time and energy.

The Cross Sell Feature allows you to cross sell items on both your shopping cart page and the actual item pages. This is beautiful! If you are already using cross sell, you know the headache of having to create the cross sell list based upon item codes. Unfortunately, that headache is still there, but they have introduced a new feature that will automatically make suggestions based upon past customers' purchase and navigation history data to suggest products that are most likely to convert to sales. This is nice!

If you are not already using Cross Sell, please give it a try. All of my stores using it have shown sales based on this feature. In short, it works! And now that it can be automatic, it's easy! More information can be found on the Yahoo! Cross Sell help page.

The other new tool is the Keyword Finder. This is a great tool that will highlight specific keywords that have helped lead shoppers to your on-line store and make a purchase. The system automatically identifies the most relevant and effective keywords by using data from activity on your store, as well as traffic driven by search marketing campaigns on Yahoo and other search engines. You can then download the list of keywords to use in your existing campaigns or start new ones.

You might already use a keyword research tool that suggests keywords based upon Search Engine use. The Yahoo! Keyword Finder suggests keywords based upon your own sites history; thereby suggesting keywords that are generating sales. Be careful though, it only suggests keywords where people have bought something. You still need to be aware of industry keywords because you might be missing sales if you aren't aware of specific industry terms. More information can be found on the Yahoo! Keyword Finder help page.

The next time you have a few minutes to play around, I highly suggest looking at these two new features. Especially with Christmas right around the corner, you may have the opportunity to increase sales a bit. That would be nice!

Labels: cross-sell, keyword, yahoo

YouTube has certainly been in the news regularly lately. I've been reading some posts about the speculation of how much money YouTube will make with the new ad structure (Estimates range from Billions to Millions.) And these articles are usually followed by some sort of Lawsuit. For example, A billion in ad revenues won't mean much if it goes out the door to settle the Viacom lawsuit.

Further reading shows German Jews are contemplating a lawsuit because YouTube shows neo-Nazi videos. I don't think Google will do much about that if Yahoo! didn't do much about the arrest and imprisonment of a few pro-democracy Chinese. Note, "German" Jews. They aren't American and we have the Freedom of Speech rule over here. I'm sure some American Jews will join the suit, but we still have that Freedom of Speech thing. Sorry.

I'm not Jewish and don't mean to be disrespectful, but don't worry Jews, I'm sure you are not alone in your quest for morality right or wrong. I was watching a TV show last night called I-Caught. A show where they show various YouTube videos and such of what's hot or not. Last night I learned that YouTube shows videos of how to make a bomb, flame throwers made from childrens' toys and how to pick locks (Although they did feel obligated not to show which childrens' toy was used in the flame thrower.) They also told me that the Internet has web sites I can go to and see the identities of undercover police. Hmmm. That is certainly newsworthy!

All I need to do now is watch the 6 o'clock news and they will have some expert who will tell me that if I were to make one of those bombs and place it at some very easy to access precise location, something really really bad will happen.

YouTube obviously touches and affects everyone whether you have a computer or not. Maybe in a few years YouTube will be like Gun Control. Here are a few bumper stickers we will be seeing:

When YouTube is Outlawed. Only Outlaws will have YouTube.

YouTube Doesn't kill people. People Do.

Insured by YouTube

Ted Kennedy's Car has Killed more People than YouTube

Criminals Prefer Computerless Victims

Keep Honking While I Refresh

I'm actually not Anti-Google or Anti-Youtube. I use both quite often. I'm just pointing out the questions everyone must be thinking. I certainly understand the Jews point of view and I understand Google. My wife always tells me to choose my battles. Therefore, I usually choose to let her deal with it but do I want my kids having access to such anti-semitism and weapons making instructions? Maybe as a parent, I could restrict what my kids do on the Internet. You know, take an active role in raising them. If only the law allowed me to discipline my kids. But that's another post in itself!

Why is YouTube getting all the heat? We have other major crises in this Country. In last night's paper, I read a letter to the editor where this woman's son was the sole survivor in an attack in Afghanistan because the group of soldiers he was with decided to let some sheep herders go who found there location. Apparently the sheep herders alerted the Taliban who then attacked in force. Killing all but one, including a few dozen rescuers. Also, the men knew that letting the sheep herders go would most likely spur a huge attack, but killing them would mean murder charges back in America. Talk about your ethical dilemma's! I say it's war! Get the camera's out and let our troops do there job. Instead, it was suicide.

Too far from home? Not your worry? How about the next time you buy gas at the corner gas station, look around on the counter. How many different kinds of Speed or stimulants are on the counter? How many cans of energy drinks are in the cooler beside the counter? look at where the rolling papers are placed and flavored tobacco? Heck, we have a local gas station that sells steel wool and glass tubes. (That's used for smoking crack.)

Come on people! Look around your own neighborhood and open your eyes. You'd be surprised at what you can see. Maybe it's about time the news crews and lawyers look around a little closer to home. Oh wait, that doesn't make as much money and sell enough newspapers.

So I'll leave you with two final bumper stickers. One should certainly fit your point of view:

Visualize World Peace

Kill 'em all, let God sort it out

Labels: google, youtube