Does the mark say, "EGOL?"

There may be some value in branding in that regard depending on what you're selling.

However, If its small and unobtrosive then the viewer probably wouldn't be able to tell what the logo is/says until they open the image.

Edit add - when its that small its easily removed and cropped so it really becomes a matter of whether you think its important as a branding element versus protection.

A watermark won't affect your rank.

In my opinion this is more a matter of the use of your time.

I very rarely see watermarks anymore on ecommerce sites. I think a watermark will do more to pollute the appearance of your product than protect your images from piracy.

From a practical perspective, Google and other shopping feeds may have rules regarding watermarks and artwork associated with products so make sure you are aware of the rules if you use feeds.

Edit add - I can recall 1 ecommerce site I've visited using watermarks and the only other places I see it are sites that sell images and artwork.

I will definitely do that for Rackspace bots, Chris.

Thank you for taking the time to walk me through this and tweak my filter.

I'll give the site you posted a visit.

Crap.

Well, I guess the vernacular is what I need to know.

Knowing what to put where is the trick isn't it? Is there a dummies guide somewhere that spells this out in kindergarten speak?

I could really see myself botching this filtering business.

Does it need the . before the )

rackspace cloud servers

Maybe my problem is I'm not looking in the right place.

I'm in audience>technology>network and the column shows "service provider."

For example,

Since I implemented the filter four days ago, rackspace cloud servers have visited my site 848 times, , visited 1 page each time, spent 0 seconds on the page and bounced 100% of the time.

What is the reg expression for rackspace?

Sure. Here's the post for filtering the bots.

Here's the reg x posted:  ^(microsoft corp|inktomi corporation|yahoo! inc.|google inc.|stumbleupon inc.)$|gomez

We've submitted our sites to the reputable local directories and update only as needed.

Looking through our backlink profile I've found our store on ooodles of local directories I have nothing to do with and never signed up for.

I'd direct the money elsewhere.

I've set up a filter to remove bot traffic from Analytics. I relied on regular expressions posted in an article that eliminates what appears to be most of them.

However, there are other bots I would like to filter but I'm having a hard time determining the regular expressions for them.

How do I determine what the regular expression is for additional bots so I can apply them to the filter?

I read an Analytics "how to" but its over my head and I'm hoping for some "dumbed down" guidance.

Depending on how your site is set up I think some history of sold out events gives you credibility from a user perspective.

Having said that however, as a user I don't want to see sold out events past the last 6 months (if you've got quite a few) - 12 months at the most.

Anything past that I would delete and redirect to current events.

Uh?

**Anybody who is lazy enough to harvest that info is lazier than smart.  Not a threat.   And, I believe in the theory that imitators come in second. **

Bravo.  A competitor is gonna look at those 5-20 meta keywords and do what?