List Building: Monitoring information from traffic metric services over a period of time will also prove useful when expanding your business. Companies utilizing affiliate programs know at a glance if a company is worth investing their time with. Webmasters seeking out reciprocal links can use data to determine which web site should be contacted. Sales staff can use information when prospecting. Since many of these services provide contact information, you can even contact from convenience of metric companies sites'.

Who's Big Winner? There are not too many online services that provide their data for free. Since many small and medium sized businesses can't afford several thousand dollar reports available from larger companies, sites such as Ranking.com offer important insights into business landscape your site is operating within.

About Author: Pete Prestipino represents Ranking.com; a popularity metrics provider offering insights and information about top 900,000 sites on Web. For information on Ranking.com or to see where you rank, visit http://www.Ranking.com.

Keywords: marketing, promotions, ranking, SEO, metrics, traffic

Result: business gets blacklisted by one or more of these services and ISP's in turn automatically block email (legitimate email) sent by business to its customers and opt-in subscribers.

To make matters even worse, nobody at these anti-spam services bothers to let business know they've been blacklisted.

When business finally discovers their status and tries to contact SpamCop, SPEWS or SpamHaus, real fun begins.

If business does discover which service(s) blacklisted them, they'll find they can't call anyone on phone to discuss problem.

They also discover these services are totally unregulated and there is no higher court of appeals.

Any email responses from these services often contain a smug attitude of assumed guilt that scoffs at your claims of innocence.

Also, don't bother asking for opportunity to face your accuser in order to prove your innocence because they get to hide behind a cloak of anonymity.

Combining this attitude of assumed guilt with inability to prove your innocence creates a recipe for disaster for every legitimate business.

Oh, by way, while writing this article, I received 19 spam email messages through an ISP monitored by all 3 anti-spam services.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

In end, current system only creates opportunity for abuse that targets legitimate businesses while real spammers just merrily keep sending their flood of email.