Spam-Proofing Your Website

Almost every website operator wants search engine spiders to visit. After all, search engines are the best source of free traffic on the web. In the event that you dont want them to visit, they are easily kept at bay with a properly formatted "robots.txt" file.

Unfortunately, theres another group of spiders out there crawling the web, with an entirely different purpose. These are the spiders that visit site after site, collecting email addresses. You may know them as spam bots, email harvesters, or any number of unpublishable names.

When it comes to controlling these rogue spiders, robots.txt simply wont get the job done. In fact, most spam robots will ignore robots.txt. That doesnt mean you have to give up, and just let them have their way. In this short tutorial, Ill teach you how to hide your email addresses from them.

Technique #1: Use Javascript To Mask Email Addresses

One of the weaknesses that spiders of all kinds suffer from is an inability to process scripts. Adding a small snippet of Javascript in place of an email address effectively renders the address invisible to spiders, while leaving it accessible to your visitors with all but the most primitive web browsers.

In the three examples below, simply substitute your username (the first half of your email address, everything before the @ symbol) and your hostname (everything after the @ symbol). To use the scripts, just insert them into your pages HTML wherever you need them to be displayed.

Example 1: Creating A Spam-Proof Mailto Link
This snippet of code creates a clickable link that launches the visitors email application, assuming that their system is configured to work with mailto links. You can replace the link text with your own message, but see example 2 if you want to display your email address as the link text.

script language=javascript
!--
var username = "username";
var hostname = "yourdomain.com";
var linktext = "Click Here To Send Me Email";
document.write("a href=" + "mail" + "tox" + username + "@" + hostname + "" + linktext + "/a")
//--
/script



Example 2: A Spam-Proof Mailto Link With Your Email Address Showing

Some visitors wont be able to use a mailto link, and will instead need to read the email address. No problem, just use the snippet below instead.

script language=javascript
!--
var username = "username";
var hostname = "yourdomain.com";
var linktext = username + "@" + hostname;
document.write("a href=" + "mail" + "tox" + username + "@" + hostname + "" + linktext + "/a")
//--
/script


Example 3: Display Your Email Address Without A Mailto Link
Sometimes, you just want to give your email address without making it a clickable link - heres a snippet that accomplishes just that:

script language=javascript
!--
var username = "username";
var hostname = "yourdomain.com";
var linktext = username + "@" + hostname;
document.write(username + "@" + hostname)
//--
/script


Technique #2: Hide Behind A Contact Form
Sometimes, the sheer volume of legitimate email from real visitors can become a burden. In this case, a simple solution is to remove your email address from your site entirely, and use a contact form. There are dozens of free ASP, Perl, and PHP scripts available online that will allow your users to fill in a form, and send you an email. Many hosting providers offer this service for free to their customers.

A contact form can enable you to deal with a higher volume of mail, by allowing you to pre-sort different types of message. This is easily accomplished by creating a drop-down menu with different options (e.g. customer service, billing, tech support, etc.) that will populate the subject line of the email message.

I hope that this tutorial has given you a clear understanding of how to protect your website, and your email address, from spam-bots. If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contact me through my website. The (spam-proof) email link is at the bottom of my home page, right after the "P.S."

Spam-Proofing Your Website and Doing Away With Unwanted Spiders
By Dan_Thies

I wish you success...

About the author.

Dan Thies has been helping his clients (and friends) promote their websites since 1996. His latest book, "Search Engine Optimization Fast Start," offers a simple, step by step plan to increase your websites search engine traffic. Search Engine Optimization Fast Start is available now at: http://www.cannedbooks.com

This article is Copyright ©2002 by Dan Thies. Permission is granted to reproduce this article, provided that the above credit line is included with any such reproduction.

dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.insideoutmarketing.com