Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECTs:Exploring E-mail- Top Ten Search Engines The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter This issue is for Friday, March 1, 2002 Table of Contents 01. Exploring E-mail 02. Top Ten Search Engines *01 Exploring E-mail Welcome to The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter. This week I want to explore e-mail and how it operates. You have just finished composing an e-mail message on your computer and hit the send button. What happens next? On the surface it appears that the e-mail is sent from your computer directly to the recipient’s computer. While this might be the end result, it’s not what really takes place. Most e-mail will pass through at least four computers on its journey. The first stop after leaving your machine is the “mail server”. This is a computer set up by your company or ISP and is dedicated to processing e-mail. Once your computer has handed off the e-mail to the mail server, it has completed its part in sending the e-mail and reports the mail as “sent”. The mail server then searches for the recipient’s mail server, exchanges greetings and sends the e-mail. The recipient’s mail server receives the e-mail and stores the message in a file. When the recipient opens their e-mail program, it checks their mail server for stored e-mail and downloads it for the recipient to read. Each step in this process is recorded in the e-mail header. Some e-mail programs include the e-mail header as part of the message. If you are using Outlook for your e-mail program, you must right click on the message and select “options” to see the header. Looking at the e-mail header can reveal information about e-mail. Most importantly, it will tell you from where the e-mail was really sent. The “from” and “reply-to” information is provided by the sender of the e-mail, so it could be fake. Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago, I had a spammer using one of our domains as the Reply-To in their spam. Each time they would send out a batch of spam, all of the replies would come to us. Using the e-mail header, I was able to identify their actual ISP. I then called their ISP and effectively shut them down. Without looking at the e-mail header, this spam appeared to have come from our domain. Lets look at an e-mail header from last week’s newsletter: Return-Path- (newsletter@inter800.com) If the recipient’s address is bad or their box is full, whatever the reason it can’t be delivered, this is the address to which the e-mail will be returned. Received- from mail.inter800.com (root@[208.254.80.205]) by mail.inter800.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) with ESMTP id QAA01791 for (chuck@inter800.com); Fri, 22 Feb 2002 15:18:30 –0500 This line documents the mail handoff, this handoff happened on Fri, 22 Feb 2002 15:18:30. The sending machine mail.inter800.com and its IP address is 208.254.80.205. Our mail server is running sendmail version 8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE, and it assigned the ID number QAA01791 to this e-mail for internal processing. Received- (from wwwrun@localhost) by mail.inter800.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SuSE Linux 8.9.3-0.1) id OAA07414;Fri, 22 Feb 2002 14:42:14 –0700 This line tells you from where the e-mail was sent. In this case, the newsletter is generated from our web server (wwwrun@localhost). However, if the e-mail came from a DSL or dial up connection, it would give you their IP address. This can help in finding out where e-mail really came from. Date- Fri, 22 Feb 2002 14:42:14 -0700 From- (Inter800 Newsletter newsletter@inter800.com) Message-Id- (200202222142.OAA07414@mail.inter800.com) The “date” tells you when it was sent and the “from” tells you who sent it. The message has been given this ID number by mail.inter800.com to identify it. This ID is attached to this message for life. The other IDs are only associated with specific mail transactions at specific machines, so that one machine's ID number means nothing to another machine. Sometimes, the Message-ID has the sender's email address embedded in it. Reply-To- (news800@inter800.com) Subject- The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter 02-21-02 To- (chuck@inter800.com) The “Reply-To" is the address you will send e-mail if you hit reply after reading the e-mail. The “subject” is what you see in the subject line of the message. The “to” is the e-mail address the message was sent. On some e-mail headers you will also find information on the e-mail program the person sending the e-mail used. Because different programs have distinctive capabilities, this can be helpful in deciding how to reply to their e-mail. If you have any thought or ideas you would like to share with me, please send them to Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com We’re Talkin’ Serious” Bone Suckin’ Sauce ! Winner: “Battle Of The Sauces.” Created in true western North Carolina style. Tomato based all-natural, sweetened with honey and molasses. Order your Box of six today for $39.99 +s/h. Toll-Free 1-800-446-0947 or online http://www.BoneSuckin.com *02 Top Ten Search Engines We've done a lot of talking about the search engines and I think it's time we expanded our discussion. So far, we've dealt primarily with the costs and efforts required to get your site listed in each engine. Today, let's take a look at which engines are getting the most use. Jupiter Media Metrix, a company that provides web ratings for US sites, has recently released ratings on "search specific" traffic. This means that only search related visits to a specific web site were counted. For example, Yahoo provides free email, games and other portal services that would not be included in this ranking. These figures show "audience reach", which is basically the number of Internet users that have conducted a search at each site some time during the month. The totals will exceed 100% because many people will visit more than one search engine during a month. MSN: 36.3% Yahoo: 33.3% Google: 24.5% AOL: 22.2% Ask Jeeves: 15.9% Looksmart: 9.6% InfoSpace: 9.4% Overture: 9.2% Netscape: 7.9% AltaVista: 5.7% Keep in mind that the numbers above reflect only visits to the various search engines, not overall search activity. For example, a person might visit Yahoo only once in a given month and would be counted toward Yahoo's share. The same person might also visit Google every day in the same month and conduct several searches per day at Google. Despite this, the person would still count only once in the figures above, which show the percent of "unique visitors" in a given month to the sites. You might be wondering, Where's Lycos? The parent company, Terra Lycos did not ask Jupiter Media Metrix to break out its search-specific traffic, so it didn't get represented in the figures above. One expert estimates Lycos' share at about 19%. Other search services such as AllTheWeb.com and Open Directory do not appear because they did not receive enough traffic to make the top ten list. There is still a great deal of controversy regarding who is number one. Yahoo argues that MSN receives searches from the Internet Explorer address bar that are counted into MSN Search's total, even though most of these are brought about by typos and other errors. MSN contends that searches done via the Internet Explorer search button are real searches that MSN Search doesn't get credit for. George Paul (http://gotollfree.com) The Internet 800 Directory 800-299-1879, Vegas Vacation has the best rates on Las Vegas Hotel Rooms. Don't make a reservation without calling us first! Call 800-637-6442 or visit our ad in the Internet 800 Directory: http://inter800.com/02281174.htm Banners? Pay-per-click? Why not target your market with links or information placed in relevant content? The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter offers direct access to business people who are interested buyers. Advertising: Information on how to sponsor this publication: Call 800-299-1879 Thanks for taking to time to review our newsletter for this week. If you know of anyone that might benefit from receiving this newsletter, send them to (http://www.inter800.com/news800/ ) where they can subscribe. All Contents Copyright ©1995-2002 The Internet 800 Directory Subscribe To The Newsletter: |