Is Top–Sites.net Legit?
Got this strange message today from Top–Sites.net. Anyone heard anything about them, or know if they are a legitimate search engine?
The email asks you to check your listing on thier site, it’s weird that they would ask permission as most search engines just do it automatically. They also create “reports on your website’s popularity and your server’s uptime.” Netcraft does the uptime bit and they don’t bother with asking permission.
Also they clearly sniff your address out from the site, which isn’t nice. Following is the message.
Could you please be so kind as to check your sitename.com listing, if you
don’t mind, at:
http://top–sites.net/update.htm?d=sitename.com&v=1553&e=i
We can only list you if you click the update button by Friday (even if your
listing is fine).
Your updated listing will also appear to the left of Yahoo, MSN, Google, Go,
AOL, Netscape, Lycos, AltaVista, and Excite searches by AutoSearch users in
Internet Explorer’s Search window.
Thanks,
John Kennedy
P.S. Please also review our translations of your website into seven
languages. And don’t miss our reports on your website’s popularity and your
server’s uptime.
You can unsubscribe at:
http://top–sites.net/cancel.htm?d=sitename.com&v=1553&e=i
4 Comments »
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No they are spammers - avoid the site(s) completely and certainly don’t respond to their emails. I reckon i get stuff from them at least once a month.
Thanks, that’s what I thought, and told my friend who asked me to stay far away from it.
Yes, they are legitimate as far as I can tell.
I checked their traffic. Alexa says they are one of the most popular sites in the world. They also have a link on their site to Alexa’s Mover’s & Shakers page. It shows they were one of the 10 fastest growing websites in the world in September.
I also checked how many sites link to them; Alltheweb.com says 14,973.
So I gave them a try.
Jim
Topsites has this neat toolbar that displays your listing in Internet Explorer’s Search window whenever one of their users does any search at any search engine. That way, you always show up on the “first page.”
I checked their toolbar out at download.com. More than 100,000 people have downloaded it there alone..and it’s available from dozens of other software sites.
Sounds like to good idea to me.