Need help from Norton about Safeweb (I am a webmaster)

I wrote to Safeweb and have not gotten a reply. My issue is this. For users with Norton products when one of my websites shows up in a search engine, there is a gray circle beside the search result. So, I went into safeweb and asked for them to rate my site. So far, in a few weeks they still haven't rated them.


My sites are mostly blogs and there are no downloads or viruses or anything unsafe about them. So, why haven't they been rated and why was my feedback or question never answered.

 

Also, the method for verification (uploading an .html file to your website) doesn't work for some of my sites (that have a website builder software on them). I need another form of verifying a site (similar to what Google webmaster tools offers) such as I put a code in the footer of the page for verification.

 

Does anyone here know who I can speak to at Norton/Symantec about all this?

 

Thanks,

D. Hamm

 

Thanks so much for your quick reply.

 

Here is an example: http://www.myartandcraftsupplies.com

 

If you search for art n craft or many other terms, I am on the first page of Google. This website / store has been online since 2007. It's an affiliate marketing site (I don't own or sell the products, I list them as recommended products for shoppers). I get well over 500 hits a day but I don't want the "safeweb" lack of rating to show up. I added a review to give the site a "community rating" in safeweb, but it shows up as "untested" when you search of it in safeweb - and there is a gray circle beside the search engine result. How to I expedite the testing? I know there are no threats associated...

 

Thanks,

D. Hamm

I forgot to talk about the website builder - I am a member of a system created by traffic genesis (soon to be called bizzites). I am not sure, I guess the software is php or something...

 

DeeDee

I took the liberty of running your site through the W3C markup validator and there are encoding issues which may be causing some of the problems. Normally errors will not have any effect on the Norton SafeWeb, however this encoding issue which is making it difficult for the W3C markup to validate the document, may also be causing a problem with SafeWeb trying to read the site:

 

"No Character Encoding Found! Falling back to windows-1252.

None of the standards sources gave any information on the character encoding labeling for this document. Without encoding information it is impossible to reliably validate the document. As a fallback solution, the "windows-1252" encoding was used to read the content and attempt to perform the validation, but this is likely to fail for all non-trivial documents.

Before defaulting to windows-1252 the validator also tried to read the content with the following encoding(s), without success: UTF-8."

Hmm, I wonder if I add something about the encoding in the headers?  Should I modify this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

 

 

Take a look at www.digitalscrapbookingnow.com - also never got rated or validated by Safeweb. This is a Wordpress blog and I uploaded a verification file but haven't heard ANYTHING from safeweb about getting it tested.

 

 

Thanks,

DeeDee

Also, I really don't see how validating code is what they are saying will make people safe from viruses or malicious software!

 

D.


ddhamm wrote:

 

Also, I really don't see how validating code is what they are saying will make people safe from viruses or malicious software!

 


Hi DeeDee,

 

That is not the case, but if the document cannot be read (validated) properly, then that may be the problem with SafeWeb - but that is just supposition on my part.

 

I checked a few other example sites on the bizzites page and found some contained the same error.

 

SInce this is a forum for Norton, I can't get too deeply involved with giving advice on writing code, however I will pass on your issue to a Symantec Employee to see if anyone can look into it for you.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to look into my situation. I think it will really be something that Norton needs to advise me about so that I can take the proper steps to correct anything that would keep my sites from being "approved"

 

D. Hamm

Not a problem.

 

The W3C pages give helpful information that is very accurate and useful.

 

I assume you build the website "online" using the tools provided by bizzites.

 

Even if the items picked up by the validator are not the reason for the WebSafe issue, they can cause problems when viewing your pages on different browsers and different platforms. Especially with the newer browsers becoming more compliant with web standards, the W3C information can be rather important.

 

Best wishes.

These two sites

www.digitalscrapbookingnow.com
www.myartandcraftsupplies.com

had not been analyzed  by Norton SafeWeb and hence had a gray rating.

 

The site owner verification process is the first step for site owners whose sites are rated "red/yellow" and would like a re-evaluation of their site.

 

It would probably be a good idea to have a feature for site owners such as you to request for rating of their sites. We will take this into consideration for the future.

 

Internally, I have requested for your sites to be analyzed by the Norton SafeWeb system.

Hi chandra -

 

Good idea!

 

Thanks.

 

:smileyhappy:

Yes! That is exactly what webmasters need - especially us one person operations...

 

I would appreciate that so much.

 

DeeDee

I wrote to Safeweb and have not gotten a reply. My issue is this. For users with Norton products when one of my websites shows up in a search engine, there is a gray circle beside the search result. So, I went into safeweb and asked for them to rate my site. So far, in a few weeks they still haven't rated them.


My sites are mostly blogs and there are no downloads or viruses or anything unsafe about them. So, why haven't they been rated and why was my feedback or question never answered.

 

Also, the method for verification (uploading an .html file to your website) doesn't work for some of my sites (that have a website builder software on them). I need another form of verifying a site (similar to what Google webmaster tools offers) such as I put a code in the footer of the page for verification.

 

Does anyone here know who I can speak to at Norton/Symantec about all this?

 

Thanks,

D. Hamm

 

I have a related problem.  My site is rated but the rating does not include shopping site information and the shopping cart icon does not appear.  Is there a way to provide information to have the shopping information appear? I have a secure shopping cart and have been selling online since 2002.  My site is www.castlemerebooks.com. Thanks for any help.

ddham,

 

This is what I'm seeing. Is this issue now resolved for you?

 

1.jpg

Regards,

- DesiT

That is so great!!! thanks. Now I have other sites I will have to check on. D. Hamm

Now I have a couple of other sites that won't verify....

 

www.gourmetkitchencookware.com

 

www.drawingtablesandeasels.com

 

Is there going to be a way that the supposed webmaster tool to verify these will actually work? (I'm putting the verification file in the root folders as it says to do)

 

DeeDee


ddhamm wrote:

Now I have a couple of other sites that won't verify....

 

www.gourmetkitchencookware.com

 

www.drawingtablesandeasels.com

 

Is there going to be a way that the supposed webmaster tool to verify these will actually work? (I'm putting the verification file in the root folders as it says to do)

 

DeeDee


Hi DeeDee,

 

As chandra stated earlier, the best way to get these tested is to visit http://safeweb.norton.com and follow the below steps:

1) copy and past the URL into the "Is this site safe?" field and click the magnifying glass to the right

2) when the results appear, to the left is an "Untested" image, and below it a link "Site Owner? click here". Click this link

3) Please read this page thoroughly and SIGNUP for SafeWeb so you can submit other sites for review

 

I know it's much easier to post links to this forum, but this process is the best way to consistently get your sites tested. Thanks!

Moved this message to its own thread for better exposure.