This new notice comes from an outfit called ZUNCH who only seem to have a gmail address zunchdomainservices@gmail.com which indicates that it is a pretty low budget attempt, you would think they would at least use their own domain name.  They do have a domain because Zunch.com advertises their Search Engine Optimization services.  Of course Zunch.com doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with zunchdomainservices@gmail.com but they do have the same street address and fax number.

This email isn’t a domain renewal scam, instead it is offering “Domain Name Search Engine Registration”, basically it seems to be an overpriced Search Engine Submission service.  They don’t say what they do for their fee, which ranges from $42 for 1 year up to a “Best Value” $499 lifetime service,  but they try to scare you into paying it by saying Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web. 

My advice is delete this email, it doesn’t offer anything worth paying for and may not offer anything at all.

Free Search Engine Submission

These days Google indexes new sites so quickly and so thoroughly that it often has a new site indexed before I set it up in Webmaster Tools (a free service),  Bing isn’t quite so quick but again Bing Webmaster Tools  is a free service which allows you to submit new sites and offers lots of good monitoring tools to go with it.  Yahoo has it’s site explorer (again free) and of course the Open Directory Project is free too.

Given that other search engines usually pick up their data from one of these sources 4 submissions usually gives pretty good results, covering well over 90% of searches. The only other search engine with a significant market share is Baidu but sadly my Chinese language skills are pretty limited.   If you have a site dealing with a particular niche there are specialist search engines which can be very useful but for most sites if you submit to Google, Bing, Yahoo and DMOZ your site will be found.

The email from Zunch Domain Services

From: "Zunch Domain Services" <zunchdomainservices@gmail.com>
Reply-To: zunchdomainservices@gmail.com
To: registrar@cotsweb.com
Subject: Domain Notification Mr Mark A Cassie This is your Final Notice of Domain Listing - COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ

Attention: Important Notice DOMAIN SERVICE NOTICE Complete and return by fax to: 1-972-455-4848 15770 N. Dallas Parkway Suite 450 Dallas, TX 75248 United States of America   ATTN: Mr Mark A Cassie ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT  registrar@cotsweb.com South Hill Farmhouse, Fosse Wa Stow-on-the-Wold Glos GL541JU GB - COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ Domain Name: COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ Search Engine Submission Requested Reply OCTOBER 24, 2011 PART I: REVIEW SOLICITATION Attn: Mr Mark A Cassie As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification for your business Domain name search engine registration. This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration and save. Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web. Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering. Search engine subscription includes domain name search engine submission. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below unless you accept this offer. Do not discard, this notice is not an invoice it is a courtesy reminder to register your domain name search engine listing so your customers can locate you on the web. This Notice for: COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ will expire on October 24, 2011 Act today! ——————————————————————————————– DETAIL OF SERVICE: ANNUAL WEBSITE SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION FOR DOMAIN NAME COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ Detail of Service: SEARCH SUBMISSIONS Reply by Date: 10/24/2011 For Domain Name: COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ Select Term Your Existing Domain Period Covered Price COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ [ ] 1 year 10/24/2011 – 10/24/2012 $42.00 [ ] 2 year 10/24/2011 – 10/24/2013 $72.00 (save 15%) [ ] 5 year 10/24/2011 – 10/24/2016 $159.00 (save 25%) [ ] 10 year -Most Recommended- 10/24/2011 – 10/24/2021 $295.00 (save 30%) [ ] Lifetime (NEW!) Limited time offer – Best value! Lifetime $499.00 Please ensure that your contact information is correct or make the necessary changes. Full Name:  Mr Mark A Cassie Email:  registrar@cotsweb.com Email 2: ____________________ Phone: _____________________ Want to receive this notification for other domains you own? simply list them below: _____________________ _____________________ _____________________ _____________________ Today’s Date: _____________________ Signature: _____________________ Payment by Credit Card PLEASE COMPLETE AND RETURN BY FAX: 1-972-455-4848 ( Please do not include your credit card number on this form just fill the information above and fax it to us, once we receive your fax we will send you instructions on how to make a payment by credit card ) COTSWOLDBEDANDBREAKFAST.BIZ ——————————————————————————————– By accepting this offer, you agree not to hold ZUNCH liable for any part. Note that THIS IS NOT A BILL. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated unless you accept this offer. The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of ZUNCH. This information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. There is no pre-existing relationship between ZUNCH and the domain mentioned above. This notice is not in any part associated with a continuation of services for domain registration. Search engine submission is an optional service that you can use as a part of your website optimization and alone may not increase the traffic to your site. If you do not wish to receive further updates from ZUNCH send an email to zunchdomainservices@gmail.com and in the subject line only put remove to unsubscribe. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents for  this letter is strictly prohibited. * 100% satisfaction guaranteed, you may request a refund within 30 days.

Please Remove Me From Your Mailing List 

In my research for this article I found this blog from Chris Neilsen saying much the same as I have, just delete this email.

The results?  After nearly 2 months of tracking I can say that about 2.5% have javaScript disabled, or 97.5% have javaScript enabled.

The website I have been tracking is  a business and visitor guide to Stow on the Wold.  I chose this site because it is fairly busy (about 4000 visitors per month) and because it very much a general purpose website with a wide cross-section of visitors.  I suspect that a more technical site might show more people with javaScript disabled, my theory is that most people don’t want to disable javaScript and wouldn’t know how to disable it if they did want to.

Update 21st December 2011 – A few more months of data show the percentage with javaScript disabled fairly steady at about 3%.   So about 97% of my visitors have javaScript enabled which is useful to know.

It has always been difficult to track when someone clicks a link on your website which takes them to an external website (a click through or clickthru if you prefer). The problem is that the resulting request is made to the external website and is logged there, it doesn’t get logged on your own website at all.

For the web designer wanting to log clickthrus this is a problem, the traditional answer is to put the code which opens the new site in a file. When the user clicks on a link some code is executed locally (and logged locally) which then makes the call to the external site. This works fine but it makes it quite difficult for search engines to follow the link to the external site, sometimes impossible. If Google can’t follow the link to the external site then you may be giving them visitors but you are not helping their page rank in Google.

This is obviously a problem that many clever people have been thinking about for some time, one of the best solutions I have found is Search Engine Friendly Click Tracking which uses javascript to log any click on a link to a file or database.

The solution

But while checking some details in Google Analytics I found a section on using javascript events to track outbound pageviews. This is essentially the same technique as mentioned above but integrated with Google Analytics rather than standalone. It seems to me that this little feature using the new version of the Google Analytics tracking code is the holy grail of Search Engine Optimisation!

All you need to do is;

1. make sure that you are using the new version of the Google Analytics Tracking code.
2. That the code is inserted in your webpage above any links that you want to track (I put it just after the <body> tag in my test page).
3. Add a javascript event tag to each link you want to track.

The actual tag is quite simple, this is Google’s example;

<a href=”http://www.example.co.uk” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/outgoing/example.co.uk’);“>

When somebody clicks on the link Google Analytics will log the click as a call to /outgoing/example.co.uk in your analytics report.

And of course the href code is retained in its natural form so it is easy for search engines to follow the link, you can give the target site the link love it deserves.

I think this is a brilliant development, a big thank you to the wizards at Google for their continued good work!

Bonuses from Google Analytics

Using Goals to monetize outbound links

In Google Analytics you can assign goals to pages which make you money, say the checkout page on your shop. You can do the same thing with your new trackable outbound links, so if you carry advertising on your site you can see exactly how much you are earning. You could assign a value of say 10p to any pageview in the /outgoing/ directory and use Google Analytics to work out your bills.

Tracking calls to images and PDF files

Also, this technique can be applied to any sort of link. I discovered it while looking for a why of tracking views of a PDF file. If you have a file, like a PDF or an image, where you can’t insert the Google Analytics code inside the file then you can do something like;

<a href=”http://www.example.co.uk” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/my_document.pdf’);“>

And you can track views of the PDF or image file just like they were a regular web page.

Thank you Google

Thank you to Google for another great tool. Now that I know the answer I have no trouble finding the solution with a search in Google but I hope this article saves someone else some time.