Moz Netiquette
-
It's now happened three times in three days: I get unsolicited email (apparently harvested from my Moz profile) that invites me to try a new product or contribute to a new site.
The senders are completely unknown to me. The emails are full of hype, sketchy on details and poorly written. They have all the hallmarks of phishing scams.
But on further inquiry the emails seem to be legit.
I nonetheless feel entitled to confess my extreme exasperation. When did sending unsolicited mass email of the "Dear Colleague" variety to perfect strangers become acceptable business practice? It's always struck me as being beyond the pale and beneath contempt. Why would anyone try to launch a business which such dubious and unsavoury tactics?
Am I missing something here? Or becoming a fuddy duddy?
I suppose I could remove my contact info from my MOZ profile, but I have found it useful in the past.
What surprises me is that people would contact me "out of the blue" to ask for free help without making the slightest attempt to cultivate a relationship first.
Am I wrong?
-
We actively try to monitor for spamming comments, but it's less easy to monitor for spammy PMs or people scraping your email address and emailing directly (we have three letters in our name, but we're not one of the three letter agencies!).
What helps us out is if you give thumbs down to spammy comments, and report those PMs as spam. We actively review what's gotten a thumbs down on the blog, and get emailed if a PM is reported as spam.
Hope this helps!
-
oh man that's true. I get about 3 a day right now, wonder how many the others get by now LOL
Marketing to marketers using bad marketing skills = Not a good campaign
-
I totally agree. The accounts that harvest these emails (and send spammy content) often times are newly created and have few moz points. The points are derived from posts that say: "great post" or "I agree"--nothing of substance or value to the thread/community. If a mozzer (that I see on the boards on a regular basis) shoots me an email for advice, I don't mind it. However, should be posted on these boards for the good of the community.
-
I too have received several spammy 'private messages' to my MOZ account. I sent a message to MOZ support concerning these users spamming members. I was told that reported accounts would be deleted.
-
I ask myself the same questions, why would anyone invest in such a marketing campaign? It seems to me that it would be a huge waste of time.
But, to quote one of my favorite sayings, "If you throw enough shit against a wall, some of it has gotta stick." The people that send out these email are probably not concerned with quality or conversion rates.
On a side note, you could remove your email address from your profile, but Moz does a great job of masking it already. If you don't have Javascript on (a lot of bots, scrapers and crawlers don't), then the email address won't be displayed. Also - do a quick Google search for your email address - I found it on several other sites.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved MOZ Crawler Stalled
MOZ crawl has been waiting since April 2nd. Whats the deal? I am not able to "recrawl", so i have been stuck in limbo.
Product Support | | WebMarkets0 -
Why does Moz see short Russian & Chinese urls as too long
We are translating content into Russian and Chinese on our website, the number of errors are increasing mainly around URL too long, each time we create a page with a Chinese or Russian url. If you click on the link below for a Chinese content page: https://www.westbourneschool.com/zh-hans/%E5%AE%BF%E8%88%8D%E5%8F%8A%E5%AF%84%E5%AE%BF%E5%AE%B6%E5%BA%AD/%E5%AE%BF%E8%88%8D%E7%94%9F%E6%B4%BB You will notice the url displayed by the browser is actually not very long, is there a way for MOZ not to see it as it appears above? Below is a page in Russian https://www.westbourneschool.com/ru/%D0%A8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%20%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5 Any help will be much appreciated.
Product Support | | mariedetitomount0 -
MOZ refusing access to certain sections of the website if using VPN?
I've used PIA and expressvpn before without any problems. Today I got nordvpn and when I try to access my campaigns and link explorer but the connection is being refused while I can access billing and the forum section. I don't have this problem anywhere else atm so I think this might not be a problem from my side but rather from these specific sections. Edit: Any idea what's going on?
Product Support | | Isildur0 -
It seems something wrong with Moz Profiles?
I just noticed that Moz Prfile is not getting update since couple of days. Is it Just me or you also having the same issue?
Product Support | | Mustansar1 -
Moz pricing plans don't make sense
Hey. I posted a question about this on my other Moz account (one I use for moz local), but it appears to have been removed, so here goes again. Can someone from Moz please explain to me why that in your plans, as the price goes up and more campaigns are allowed, the amount of keywords tracked per campaign goes down? $149 plan - 5 campaigns - 450 keywords = 90 keywords per campaign. $249 plan - 25 campaigns - 1100 keywords = 44 keywords per campaign $599 plan - 100 campaigns - 3700 keywords = 37 keywords per campaign What confuses me here with your pricing plans is two fold Modern SEO requires a lot of quality content, interlinked together to rank well (in most cases). Your SEO guides even talk about this. Blogging is one of the most popular ways to do this. However, in any modest website these days, especially one that runs a blog, how does tracking only 37 keywords per campaign make sense? The fact is, that even your starter plan with only 90 per campaign doesn't make sense. My business website is tracking about 300 (that actually drive traffic). I provide my SEO clients with the same type of work I would do for my self, which again reinforces that 37 keywords is plainly pathetic. Every online pricing model I've ever seen follows one simple rule: When price goes up, you get more for your money, not less. At first glance you might think that is what you're getting when you step up a plan and get more campaigns, but then to have less keywords per campaign simply doesn't make sense at all. What does make sense is to have a more flexible pricing model. Instead of locking us into set tiers which don't really make sense, you should allow a more flexible pricing BEFORE we have to go up to enterprise. Why not have a per project price of 'x' price per month, then have a price per keyword or maybe per 100 keywords. This would allow all of us the flexibility to run campaign depths that make sense for us, not for your counterintuitive views of how we should be tracking them. Again, I'd really like a Moz staff person to respond to this as the last time I commented about this, it was removed.
Product Support | | Multiverse-Media-Group0 -
Tracking more competitors with Moz Pro
Hello Moz, I am currently in my free trial period of Moz Pro and am enjoying it very much. However, I would like to be able to track more than just three competitors per campaign. Is this something that is available with an upgrade?
Product Support | | InterCall2 -
The Moz website is acting all freaky...
It keeps loggng me out, not showing my campaigns, and generally being weird. Is anybody else experienceing this?
Product Support | | GregB1230 -
Why Moz Analytics says that my site had a 13% traffic increase and Moz Pro says that the same site had 3% decrease on traffic?
Every Tuesday The first thing I do in the morning is check my updates on my Moz Campaigns... Today the numbers just don't make sense... How come Moz Analytics and Moz Pro are showing different numbers? Does any one have the same problem? Which one should i trust?
Product Support | | Felip30