This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your search engine registration

Several clients have been sending me these emails that look quite official and sound threatening (“Failure to complete … ” etc.). It sounds very much like it’s your domain registration (which is their trick), but it’s not. If you read a little further, you’ll see it’s just a sales pitch (an underhanded one at best) trying to get you to sign up with their shady SEO tactics. If a company is so spammy and tricky to send out junk like this, who knows what they’d do with your site!

Quick answer: no, you don’t need to pay, it’s a scam.

It’s a little scary that they have so much information (your domain name, your email, your address, and even you phone number). But they’re getting this information from the public WHOIS records so you should consider either changing your (1) domain registrations to “private” (which you do at your domain registrar) or (2) putting a PO box or other address and contact info that you’re comfortable with being public.

Here’s the letter:

Failure to complete your search engine registration by Jan 20, 2011 may result in the cancellation of this offer (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).

Your registration includes search engine submission for [yourdomain.com] for 1 year. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer by Jan 20, 2011. This notice is not an invoice. It is a courtesy reminder to register [yourdomain.com] for search engine listing so that your customers can locate you on the web.

The photo is from Luang Prabrang in Laos at an office where we needed to get our papers stamped by the local authorities. The two boys are looking at the map and I thought it was a good “Search Engine Optimization” analogy because they have about as much chance of finding your website as these scammers do helping you.