Re: Site Submission status of Web Site
>I thought that one had to submit each month or so to remain in their database and that it was not spam if it was a monthly submission.
Wrong on both counts.
1) There isn't a single major SE for which you have to resubmit each month.
2) At one time, the first-generation search engines (Altavista, etc.) gave higher rank to "new" sites, and took a submission as evidence of "newness." (Note: this is NOT AT ALL the same thing as "not being kept in the database if you don't resubmit.") But affiliate-website-spammers discovered that they could use constant resubmission to get an artificially inflated position. And they all started doing it. As a result, Altavista was completely clogged with affiliate-marketing spam, and ... died. So when you say it's "not spam" you are dead wrong on at least two counts -- it was from the usual spam perpetrators for the usual spamming purposes, automated with constant virus-like changes to get around the recipient's spam-blocking procedures, and it was unwanted, even eventually fatally toxic, to the recipient.
A lot of those same jerks that killed Altavista now find that their automatic scripts are of no value to promoting their own worthless sites (since Google came up with a way of negating that kind of spam, and Inktomi, Looksmart, etc., started charging real money for submissions) . So they spread the viscious lie that you heard, and sell their worthless services to people that fall for it through failure to keep abreast of the search engine technology.
In a word, you have been conned by spammers.
And it's odd you should mention that you were told it wasn't spam. Think about it. When you get an illegal, fraudulent chain-letter con by e-mail, what are the two things they ALWAYS explicitly tell you? 1) "I checked, and THIS IS PERFECTLY LEGAL" 2) This is NOT A CON, IT REALLY WORKS!" They will always explicitly make both points. Because, the fact is, they know it looks like an illegal con because it IS an illegal con, and they know they have to address that issue.
And what did unsolicited commercial e-mails start saying a few months ago? "THIS IS NOT SPAM, it complies with Federal Regulation whatever." The fact is, it looked like spam because it was spam.
And in these forums, whenever someone brings up the subject of their site being "not an affiliate" -- they think we've already figured out which program it's "NOT" an affiliate of.
This is a general rule of life in an imperfect world. When you hear someone quacking "I am not a duck," you know not to expect water to adhere to their tail feathers.
