Charles Tips – Domain Directory Listing Scams

Here’s another scam designed to get you to share your credit card information: the Internet Domain Listing Service. It’s been around many years.

The Domain Listing Service usually involves an invoice you receive either via email or in postal mail. It’s deceptively designed to look like a bill you owe regarding your domain name. There is generally a sense of urgency expressed in it. The invoice coincidentally arrives roughly about the time your domain is due for annual renewal. That’s key to folks falling for it.

What the “service” purportedly offers is listing your domain in places on the web to get your website found – for several hundred dollars or more. We have found little or no evidence of any tangible results for most of these. We’ve actually seen web sites banned in search engines as a result of some “listing” services.

There ARE valid directories on the web that help sites increase search engine ranking. At CharlesWorks we provide this for no additional ongoing inclusion fees.

Carefully read the text in these offerings! It usually reveals that they are just a solicitation and not a required service.

Charles Oropallo (Charles@CharlesWorks.com) started CharlesWorks in Peterborough NH in 1998. His team does website design, hosting, search engine optimization (SEO) and related web services.