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These IP were spoofing from many countries. They would disappear in minutes. Anyway, we found the main IPs that were attacking. YES YOU ARE RIGHT about identifying the one common factor. At 1st we thought blocking IPs would work, but when that didn't work, we started blocking the 'sytle' they were using.
Woot Woot! I don't see eHow above me anymore!
I think a new list of the top 10 or 20 would suffice for the time being while the rest are being deteremined viable or not.
thanks Petra, JoeAnt charges a onetime fee of $39.99 USD. I would rather pay the fee.
I need to pay for some directories, but I don't know if BOTW, Business.com, Joe Ant and others are still worth it. Anybody know if this is still viable?
http://www.seomoz.org/directories
All Mozzers, can you please give me a 'thumbs up' so I can get more MozPoints? 
Update:
Switched to Amazon Cloud and got Amazon involved. They helped out by providing some tools. Basically we filtered the attacks by not accepting IPs who were transferring a certain amount of packets. Woot Woot! We have been up and running now for about 6 days with no problem. All I know is that the attacker had a browser with a Russian Language. The site Ship Car Overseas survived!
To optimze a webpage for my number one converting keyword in Google Adwords instead of purely going off Google Keyword Tool.
The answers above are all good. I don't know if there is a right answer though. I think my approach would be something like what http://www.gap.com did. They have 5 different sites combined into one. Look at the URLs. Looks like they are using subdomains to use the same shopping cart between all sites. But I don't think you would need to do subdomains. I would shoot for long term SEO strategy.
I have a client I landed about 1 1/2 months ago. The only traffic coming to the site is from Google Adwords. The goal page is the "Get A Quote" page and the closing ratio is 32.4%. So about 1 in 3 visits fill out the quote form. I usually do eCommerce and I am used to seeing 2-3% goal conversions. But 32.4%???? Is that normal for a regular static site (non-ecommerce). It's been like that for a whole week! Should I toot my own horn here?
Update:
We dropped Dreamhost.com since they couldn't help. They were useless in this area.
We copied the DB and pointed the URL in GoDaddy to our new host at Amazon Cloud. Well, the DDoS attacks a still coming in. The site was up for a short while (I'm talking minutes) then refreshed the pages and the ISP says the site wasn't there anymore. Damn, this attacker is relentless. I will be enabling the Amazon Balance Loader tomorrow. If this renders the DDoS attack ineffective, then Amazon solves it. But I won't find out until tomorrow.
Here is what dreamhost said:
" it does indeed look like you were getting attacked yet again. Unfortunately there isn't much you or myself can do in these cases.. I've disabled your domain again and will re-enable it in a week. I'm hoping that by then, the attacker has given up and moved on. If this is not the case, I regret to say that you will need to find hosting elsewhere as we do not offer a DDoS protection service. Please let me know if you have any questions.Thanks! Jason Y "
In conclusion dreamhost can't help.
Thanks there cowboy. Dreamhost still has not replied. I think I'll keep everything tracked here just in case other people run into this DDOS problem in the future. So far this is what has happened:
The reason I decided to transfer the DB to a new domain was I don't want to be a sitting duck if Dreamhost says they can't help. I am pretty sure they can help, but I put into place my plan B just in case. I'll keep everyone posted.
Here the setup:
Server is hosted inhouse. It got attacked using a DDOS from 20+ IP addresses spoofing in different counries. Our server overloaded and didn't work anymore.
URL is registered at GoDaddy.
Signed up at Dreamhost. We pointed DNS to Dreamhost successfully.
Attacks kept coming and messed up other sites on the Dreamhost shared server. We didn't know we were being followed at first. We originally thought they were attacking the IP address on our inhouse server.
Dreamhost noticed the attack and put us on a seperate IP and disabled our URL until the attacks 'stopped'.
MY QUESTION IS:
What do I do if they don't stop? Close shop? 99% of the business is internet driven. This has to be the blackest Blackhat SEO ever.
Here is where the traffic comes from.
60% of the quotes come from people in the United States
40% of the quotes come from people in their own country, not usa.
It sounds as 'if' I GEO target url.com to US (this has the rankings), my international keywords will disappear because I am telling google that url.com is only in the US. 40% of my traffic would go away by geo targeting URL.com to the US. I see that you said URL.com/us, but then I would have duplicate content. Url.com would equal url.com/us, unless I rewrote everything. I think url.com will go as unlisted. "If" I create url.com/us with original content, then I will be competing for the same keywords.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
Read the part:
Also watch this video
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally.
The site is broken down like this:
Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country.
I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted."