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speechless!

Mrb is obviously right, you shouldn't let this take too much of your time and should move on, putting down to life, regardless how frustrating.

But I wouldn't be able to leave it there and would be harbouring all sorts of schemes, no doubt it would be the wife who would finally knock some sense into me. I'd definitely try with a County Court Claim. I'm assuming this cowboy won't be a member of any professional organisations, so it limits the practical solutions.

Very frustrating reaction from your local Police. Worth trying to get some media spin for it from your local press? It's a great/shocking story that will resonate with a lot of people, if nothing else you could get yourself some free marketing.

Yup, first thing I did was look at competitors and base ours around those. Later on I "legalised" them.

Since then a variety of sites have nicked ours, so what goes around...

The ones that really wind me up are the charity magazine scams. They get closed down or wound up, only to reopen the following week by the same people.

You can set up a Limited company in about 10 minutes online. Personally I think this is wrong. If you are going to start a business, you will have done more than 10 minutes worth of research and planning, so why not have a more rigorous process to start a business.

Can you fund it, do you have a realistic business plan, have you had any director responsibility with a company that previously folded etc etc. 

Limited liability is a useful structure, letting people learn from mistakes and trying again. There are scores of successful and profitable businesses that started with a few bumps in the road. But I think the system has been abused for too long by the unethical and corrupt

Originally Posted by Barney

“I can see it in the search, but clicking on it, does nothing. Apart from the on and off switch I'm not that savvy with computers, so keep it simple thanks

I still have to go into firefox to get onto here by the way... Maybe I might just get a new computers and be done with all this messing around.”

Back to Barneys original problem, I'm baffled! It sounds like the Clive school of computer problems which make no logical sense, and only seem to happen to him, so I put it down bad computer karma 

Treat yourself and get a new PC, just make sure it's not Windows 8.1 

March 2014 we were invited to bid for a Trusted Trader project in Edinburgh. After a few meetings and the bid process unfolded, it became obvious we were going to win it. Then came the hard bit, delivering it 

Well it's been a fascinating process, with plenty of trips to Edinburgh which has got to be said, is an incredibly beautiful city if anyone hasn't been. I'm determined now to go up in non work mode and do some proper site seeing with the family.

We've met and are working with some great people and couldn't have been made to feel more welcome.

From a techie perspective it's been great fun, ironing out the challenges and getting our developer to turn my mad ideas from a project plan into real code. It's also meant we've gained a marketing manager and outsourced a proof reader when it became obvious none us is good at grammar

But its really pushed us as a business which is a good thing, and made me realise we weren't being pushed enough. I think complacency can be a curse for a lot of smaller businesses. You have your regular clients, regular cash flow, everything's rosy, but you're just plodding along. Where's your strategy, what happened to your ambition and growth plan? Where's the fun?

This week the website went live to Edinburgh residents after a formal PR launch event, and the initial feedback has been great. We've explored new marketing approaches, tried new things and it's paying off. We've also been very lucky, we've had access to a comms team that have been incredible and allowed us to punch above our weight. The fires are firmly relit and now poor old MLS is starting to look a bit tired and dated. Or is that the techie just itching to make changes and interfere for no reason  

We now have a very busy future ahead, an expo at the end of the month and more possible opportunities to explore.

Moral of the story? None really, not quite a good a name drop as Barneys "I'm working with 20th Century Fox" but it does show that even with the sometimes ropey infrastructure we have to work with, you can conduct business or compete anywhere in the UK or overseas, and against bigger and higher profile competitors.

Don't be complacent, be ambitious. Branson said everything has already been done. So pick something and just do it better. Great advice.

Anyone else need any fires relighting, or is everyone one else in world domination mode?

How did you get on?

I hate driving round Coventry, that ring road gives me the heebjeebies! Drive round Brum, London, no probs.

Coventry, I get lost everytime, or nearly wiped out on the ring road with people entering and leaving the same 150 yard bit of slip road doing about 80mph 

Ok, that's a good name drop, you win 

So does that mean we will have some young actresses warming themselves on Barneys pipes? 

As has been said already this concept isn't new, it's been around for a long long time.

But from an SEO point of view we see this all the time. (well I don't, but I hear the moaning) 

As a directory we get absolutely plagued with this rubbish, SEO companies trying to swamp the market with what they see to be high prize terms. Most of these terms feed back to a minimally customised landing page, but you recognise the templates straight away.

For example take a 7 day period, we'll receive around 3-400 fake listings, left with a throw away email address, pointing to a fake address. The telephone number will point to a call centre where they will try and flog you leads etc. Some weeks it's more, other times it's less, but the problem is infuriating.

Popular ones are:

Plumbers Cardiff

Builders Cardiff

Removals Cardiff

Cleaners Cardiff etc etc. Then substitute Cardiff for any random town name.

The funny thing is these listings are all manually listed (they can't script it) and we used to delete thousands at the moderation stage.

But they do teach us great anti spam techniques, auto IP blocking etc. More recently we've started blocking whole ranges owned by proxies such as "Hide My Ass" from our sign up page, rather than the firewall. We figure if you are registering with a proxy, you have something to hide, and we don't want you 

But if a visitor from a proxy wants to click on an adsense unit then that's fine by us  

Best laugh we had recently was email abuse from a bunch of SEO spammers when they realised we had blocked their proxy IP range, demanding that we let them through? 

I've spoken to a few directory owners who have seen an increase in the same kind of rubbish. Unfortunately it's still (currently) an effective technique and plenty of larger directories (not naming) let them happily go through. I suspect Google and it's terminator approach will crack it in the end, but I'm a huge thumbs down for SEO rental sites, for all the reasons above and mine.

So long waffley answer to a simple question.

Short answer is no. I've seen your SEO work first hand which is first rate, so genuinely surprised why you would want go down this route, and not carry on doing what you are doing.

If it is just a research exercise/proof of concept, then hopefully us old farts have persuaded you otherwise 

yup verify both, in Google land, the www and non www are technically 2 different sites.