[thelist] Tip for Everyone to Enjoy

[Hershel Robinson]

Sometimes tips are regarding technologies with which I am not familiar, 
such as Ruby on Snails or Snackintosh computers, so I don't necessarily 
read them. The following tip, however, I think will be of interest to 
everyone:

<tip subject="thelist and Search Engines" author="Hershel Robinson">

Be careful when you post not-yet-public URLs to thelist. You may get 
more than you bargained for.

I am building an e-store for Mishpacha Magazine, yet it's not quite 
ready for visitors. I have sent a few URLs to thelist (and also CSS-d) 
and at present, if you search on Google for the text:

mishpacha magazine junior

The very first entry is one of those URLs! The third (or fifth) entry is 
to a thelist archive page. Via that first URL you can access the entire 
not-yet-ready site.

The reason I am aware of our excellent Google rating is that we have had 
three visitors actually attempt to purchase subscriptions from our 
store, and many visitors found us via Google. Their purchases did not 
complete (as the store is not yet accepting credit cards) but at least 
one of the purchasers did not quite realize this. Furthermore, since the 
purchase did not complete, we never received an email that a purchase 
was made.

When I finally noticed her in the customer database, we called her and 
asked what happened. She said she had indeed purchased a subscription 3 
months prior (she thought she had anyhow) and was actually wondering why 
her first magazine had never arrived in the mail!

So the moral of the story is, be careful what you post to thelist. :)

</tip>