Foreign Language page

Three or four years ago I translated a few pages into a couple of different foreign languages. I assume I was trying to expand the reach of the site into other countries. Well I was already receiving visits from those countries, but I was looking for more hits. Having pages written in the correct language would support bringing in more foreign visitors. There were six pages translated into either German, Italian, or French. The pages included CAN Bus, USB, SATA, and PCIe to name a few. I don't remember which one, but one of the search engines was used to translate the pages.

The graphic tells the story on how the pages have been doing. A steady decline in page views over the last few years. I assume the decline is because the search engines are better at translating pages, or maybe the link to 'translate this page' is more visible. At any rate it would seen that these pages serve little purpose now, or not much.

The real point here is I noticed that the blog feed from Feedburner was only being viewed  by users in the US. No foreign users were indicated in the Feedburner stats. I figured I would add a Feedburner banner to a few of the pages that had been translated, and while adding the banner I checked the stats for the pages.

So regardless of the page decline, the animated header was added to a few translated pages to bring in more visitors to the blog form different countries.

Graphic; Google Analytics data; Pageviews, filtered by 'Translate' ~ per week.

Pageviews still on the Increase

With the up-coming holiday I assumed that interfacebus would start seeing a decrease in site visits. However that has yet to occur, at least that I can tell. Yesterday was the second highest Tuesday on record, with 9,221 visits. Of course I'll see a decrease the day of the holiday, but because the web is world wide the decrease won't be total. In the early hours eastern Europe will be showing up, followed by South America and Canada, and then Western Europe ~ or something like that. As the chart shows the site just past 2 million visits to date for the year.

All the bad links were fixed from the site-wide check the other day, nothing but routine updates occurring now. There is a slow html enhancement being made to the Dictionary and Acronyms pages, but that will go on for weeks. In a few cases the page might visibly change but not by much.

I did notice that the main Transistor Derating page lost its page rank, not really sure what happened there. A few of those pages were also just updated [2N3441], but they still get almost no incoming visits. Guess everyone already knows how to derate a transistor, or I pick transistors nobody uses.

Graphic; Google Analytics / Map Overview / Countries/Territories 2009.

Proprietary Embedded Board Formats

I just happened to be checking a few of the COTS Board Manufacturer pages today. I noticed that the few pages I picked to update, at random, were receiving almost no incoming visits. It only took a few minutes before I realized that the three board formats I had updated were all proprietary standards. Really proprietary board formats, because I don't know that any board standard was ever released ~ other than a detailed data sheet so the board could be designed into an embedded system.

So I opened the STX Board Format page to do a routine update, or just to check to see it was up-to-date. Anyway I also opened site analytics to see how the page was doing for visits. That  board format receives almost no visitors, then I started to wonder why that was. That's when I noticed that the format was proprietary in nature.

There really is no reason for someone to visit my site for a board format that is only produced by one or two individual companies, unless they don't realize the standard is proprietary. So I can understand why the incoming visits to that page are so low. However; on the positive side, by listing the standard on the site the information is there to review if it ever comes up in conversation. That is, I don't have to claim ignorance, within minutes I know what the STX board is just by pulling up the page.

I figured I would then check a few other proprietary board standards, like E2Brain. Same story with this industrial format, except that this page received even lower page views by 30%. I pulled up the PISA board standard next. Now to my surprise the PISA format was getting 3x the page views even though I figured this format was obsolete. The PISA slot format is based on a modified PCAT slot connector, which by definition implies obsolesce because the industry moved onto PCI many years ago.

I don't have a point here, other then to indicate that some pages will never do well on the web, but they still deserve a place on interfacebus to insure the topic is covered; Industrial Embedded Board Formats.
I did make sure that the page clearly indicated that the board formats were proprietary......

Graphic; Single Board Computer [SBC]. Public Domain.

Google Page Ranking

Not really sure how many other times I've posted about Page Ranking issues, but I'm always amazed when I come across one of my pages with a zero page ranking. Now sometimes a page does regain a page rank, I just rechecked two links from the Aug posting.
However in other cases the ranking remains at zero. From the April posting, which only related to the section on Equipment Manufacturers;  the 'Ae' Electronic Vendors listing remains at zero months later, and I'll bet it had been there long before that. Also nothing for the 'Asq' Electronic Vendors, the 'B' Equipment Vendors, 'Cm' Equipment Manufacturers, 'Dem' Manufacturers, and the 'Fm' Component Manufacturers page. I'm sure there are many others in this section with no ranking. Note [below] that the blog posting in 6/08 was basically the same posting as 4/09.

Another section that always has a lot of no-ranked pages is the Recommendations for Derating a Transistor. For example the 2N3250 Derating Guide, the 2N4150 Derating Guide, or the 2N6691 Derating Guide all are at zero and they have been on the web for over a year.

Yet another section that always has issues with ranking are the Technical Terms section. Just to list a few; 'Tr' Definitions, the 'Rec' Terms, and 'Op' Technical Terms. There are many other pages as well, these are but a few. But as the web master I have no control over how a page gets ranked.

So I updated these pages again as they required it, but there is little else I can do. The equipment manufacturers have existed for over three years, the engineering dictionary for over two years and the Derating guidelines for over a year.......

Previous Blog posting;
No Google Page Ranking. Aug 19 2009
Zero Google Page Ranl for Component Vendors. Apr 22 2009
Page Rank & Listing of Manufacturers. June 8 2008

The graphic is the site logo for interfacebus.

Xenu Report, Statistics for Managers

I ran Xenu on interfacebus over the last hour. I run it on the off hours to keep my server happy, or at times when I expect low site visits. Normally I check for bad links every three months or so, but it eats up server bandwidth so not more than that. Plus the error rate is only 0.6% and most of those will turn up good later today.

Forbidden Request;
This just means when my spider hit the site, they return a no robots message. But I checked them and they all work. 
The resource is no longer available;
Yahoo Geocities closed down this year and I had one link off the Engineering Dictionaries page. I removed the link and reloaded the page.
Timeout;
Their server is slow; 3 out of the 5 sites are working now.
Temporarily  Overloaded;
Another slow server; three of the 4 sites are working.
Server Error;
I don't know what this means, two of the 3 sites are working.
No Object Data;
That's from Kaparel. First guess is he no longer exists...

The rest will not be rechecked today. After years of doing this I've learned not to wast my time checking and re-checking the same site. I'll give them a few days to come back on the web. However three of the 'Not Found' issues is from one of my pages which will be fixed today. It does appear that one of the 'Not Found' links on the VHDL Counter page is gone, if he doesn't come back in a few hours it will be deleted.

So of the 65 issues, 25 are good. Leaving 45 potentially bad sites out of 6885 doesn't sound so bad. Remember, most or all of those sites could pop back up later today as their server comes back online.
The other side of that is many of these companies reside on more than one page; for example a vendor might be listed with Battery Manufacturers, but also on the OEM vendor listing. Or maybe a company manufacturers SSTL ICs and LVTTL parts.....

Anyway the site appears healthy; also, the highest number of visits for a M, T, W, or R occurred this month. Not sure why Friday is lagging and I'm not really tracking the week ends.
Graphic; Xenu report summary. Click for a larger image.