Logic Behind Our Server Names

At Webmail.us we name all of our servers using hostnames that fall under a very generic domain name.  I am not going to list that domain name here so that Google doesn't index it in this blog post, but I'm sure you could figure it out if you wanted to.

The reason we use such a generic domain is because a large percentage of our business comes through resellers.  And most of our resellers want their customers to think that the email service is entirely owned and operated by them - in fact we encourage this.  Our resellers own the relationship with their customer, and we have no desire to interfere with that.

So we help them hide the fact that Webmail.us is powering their email hosting service by using generic server names everywhere, even in our reverse DNS.  And if you were to check the WHOIS database for this domain you will see that all of the contact info references a third-party holding company named "Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc."

Pretty slick, huh?

Comments

[David]

Not that this is overly relevant to your post but you can include the rel="nofollow" tag into any link (such as the one to the undisclosed emailsrvr. ;p

You can learn more here:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

When Google/Yahoo/MSN get to the nofollow tag they will do the following:
1. NOT follow through to that page.
2. NOT count the link in calculating PageRank link popularity scores.
3. NOT count the anchor text in determining what terms the page being linked to is relevant for.

Like I said, not overly relevant to the post but a tid bit you might like to know.

[David]

And... MovableType (and thus TypePad) incorporate the nofollow tag to turn all links made by Commenters (like me). As an example you can look at the source for this page (look at the url for my name 'David').

Again, not overly relevant for the post.

[Bill Boebel]

Cool, thanks David. In this case I don't even want the text indexed, so that a search for the server name won't turn up this blog post. I believe the rel="nofollow" tag only helps with links.