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November 10, 2008

My email address has been mysteriously entered to some odd mailing lists over the years. For a long time, I was supposedly in the real estate business; I'm also theoretically interested in attending Malaysian business conferences. Now, according to one German-language spam message, my dannyg.com web site—the one about my books and computer programming—is proof that I'm in either the restaurant or hotel business.

The spam message tells me that a search for my restaurant or hotel at dannyg.com resulted in a negative evaluation. Oh, man! Is somebody writing trash about a deflated souffle coming out of my kitchen, or a hair left in the bathroom sink? Damn you, blogosphere!!

The message goes on to tell me that if potential customers find negative evaluations or test results when they Google for my restaurant/hotel, I won't be able to turn them into customers. Oh, no!

Fortunately, the sender is a professional public relations firm specializing in search engine optimization for the restaurant/hotel industry ("Ihr Restaurant/Hotel PR für Suchmaschinen Team"). To prove they are sophisticated Internet professionals, the link in the message isn't to a web site, but to a gmail address, whose account name includes the words "hotel" and "public relations."

Two words:

No Vacancy.