Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Web Statistics


Web analytics indicate an average year The server side counter AWSTATs indicates 2,326,184 visits while Google Analytics shows 2,131,879 visits with 3,987,364 Pageviews.


2007 had 2,354,985 web visits and 4,063,901 page impressions
2006 had 1,550,092 web visits and 3,688,317 page impressions

It appears that 2007 had a bit more traffic than 2008

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Sitemap Generator


I up-loaded a new XML sitemap to Google [Google, Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps]. The current XML sitemap contains 1,859 submitted URLs, as reported by Google. The previous XML sitemap was last up-loaded on August 16th and contained 1,727 URLs. So 132 new pages were added to the web site over the last 4 months. The last site map caused 1,318 URLs to be indexed by Google.

During this same time frame 968 html files were changed or up-dated in some fashion. However the up-dates could be just html fixes in some cases.

The program GSiteCrawler is used to spider the site and generate an XML Sitemap. Because of the bandwidth required I only generate a sitemap once every few months. The program has to check every page on the web site. But once the site map is generated and up-loaded to the server the bandwidth usage remains the same. Google reads the sitemap once every few days regardless of how old it is. So if Google is going to download the sitemap from the server it may as well be up to date.

Other search engines find the site map via a comment in the robots.txt file on the server. That comment happens to point to another web site which also holds the sitemap.xml file. So only Google downloads the sitmap from my server, all other search engines get the same file from another server [saving me bandwidth].

I also started to update the HTML version of the sitemap, the human readable version. I added 18 new page addresses to the sitemap that had been added to the site from 8/16 to 10/16. I up-loaded what I had and will add the previous two months as time permits.

A few days ago I spidered the site using Xenu to check for broken web links. Xenu indicates 2% of the 6,105 URLs on the site were bad. However giving them a few days to come back proved that only about a dozen URL links were really gone. I did end up deleting or removing a few links.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Adding Pages to Increase Visits


I keep track of new page additions to the web site via another blog. So far this year about 190 new pages have been added to interfacebus.com, a few other new additions to the other web sites. However many of the new pages are small in size which makes it hard to compete with similar pages with more content on the internet. Of course even if the new pages do not show well in the search engine rankings [SERPS] they still serve to support the web site.

What Page Rank a page receives is determined by the search engines, as is when a page receives a Page Rank. Page Rank and Search Engine position are both determined by the search engines, with Google bringing in the vast majority of incoming visitors.

Of course some pages just might not do well because they have little or no content;
Manufacturers of Solderless Terminals,
Manufacturers of Water Alarm Units,
Synchro definition,
Mazda Engine Control System, [New page]
Residual Current Device definition,
Manufacturers of Thermal Adhesive Compounds, [No page linking in]
Industrial Mezzanine Board Formats, [No page linking in]
Industrial Tool Manufacturers,

So those are a few of the pages that have had the fewest visits this year. In two cases it appears like there were no other pages that pointed to them, which would explain why the page received no hits.

It's a bit hard to find the low performing pages because the list is full of misspelled page addresses, which return a 404 page not found code. The list of 'Top' Content' is generated by Google Analytics and contains 18,718 line items for the year. However I only checked the top 2,500 as all the rest of the list is just misspelled page addresses. The Mazda page is 1,670 line items from the top of the list [surrounded by misspelled web addresses].

Adding new pages does not guaranty more traffic

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Web History Stats


Went ahead and started to compare web stats for this year and last. So far they look about the same. Of course I don't have any data for December yet, but I can estamate that. Last year. December saw 126,000 unique visitors. So I should see around 1,650,000 visitors this year, or about the same amount as last year.


Friday, November 21, 2008

Google PageRank Reduced

I noticed my Google PageRank reduced from a 5 to a 4 on interfacebus.com. The site has had a PageRank of 5 for years now, although I have seen a reduction in the past. Using Google Webmaster Tools I can see which page on the site has the highest PageRank. Back in August a page other the the index page had the highest PageRank, so it does go up and down.

It could be that the Home page was just a 5.0 instead of say a 5.8 so maybe it's common for the index to slide between a four and 5, but I don't see a PageRank of 4 that often.

Why does the PageRank change; well it's recalculated each month. Some page that link to you may be off-line when the GoogleBot checks them making appear that fewer external pages are being linked in at any given time.

Friday, November 14, 2008

MS Web Site Issues


OUTDATED TEXT REMOVED, 6-28-2010

Same thing happened with the browser that Google came out with; Chrome. I could not access the site data using that browser either ~ There is a previous post about that issue, I think. So now, Firefox now longer works. What, it's an MS site, so only Internet Explorer will work on a Microsoft Soft web site.........

Any way I posted a graphic which shows hits to serialphy.com, which is another site I operate. The two main items are the Orange line which shows unique visits, and the yellow line which depicts number of visits.

I see an increase in visitors, so I'm fine with that. Notice I do not provide any hard numbers ~ there to low...... Oh, November is low because it's still mid-month, so that data will not be available for another 15 days.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Spider Crawl Stats


I just checked the crawl stats for interfacebus.com using Google's Webmaster Tools. The attached graphic shows Googlebot's [Google's spider] activity over the last 90 days.


The first two graphs appear normal, but the last graph does not. Check out the reduction in time to spider a page even as the amount of data downloaded has increased.

Does this mean that my server has gotten faster over the last few months? Or maybe Google is coming out at 3am when there are less people using the server?

Friday, October 17, 2008

What's new blog

Looks like the companion blog used to indicate new pages to interfacebus.com is a year old now. The blog just provides a link to new pages as they are added to the site. There were 35 entries last year and another 73 additions this year for a total of 108 separate blog pages. Many of these pages contain several 'new' links to pages that were just added to the site, so a few hundred pages have been added over the last year.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Open Office Down Load


Open Office came out with a new version the other day. So I went ahead and down loaded version 3.0 of Open Office tonight. I think the previous version I used was 2.4, but I'm not really sure.

Open Office is one of the free versions of MS Office, but produce by another company and it has nothing to do with Microsoft. Free is a lot better than $600.......

Check it out at openoffice.org,

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Googl Chrome Stats


I'm not seeing any real increase in visits from the Google Chrome browser.


But, I just noticed something else..... I was just out trying to check a new page that was added a few days ago, which had a link off of one of the dictionary pages. However the page did not contain the link to the new page. Checked the server and the server showed the page was just up-dated a few days ago. Hmm, I hit the 'reload this page button' and the link shows up, "Pulse Shape".

In Internet Explorer, for example, there is an option to 'Automatically' check for a newer version of the page, but I can not find that option in the Chrome Browser. Yea, we don't like that........

Friday, September 12, 2008

Web Site Birthday


I just realized that the web pages now located at interfacebus.com are ten years old this year. Now the current site was started in 2000 with the purchase of the current domain name, but it had lived out on another web address before that.


Figured I would list a few pages that were not doing so well, like the pages with the lest amount of page views:
Compliance Testing, looks like this page needs a little work.
Listing of Manufacturers, Vm. Has no page rank either
Listing of Manufacturers, J, Has no page rank.

Some of those pages are new, so low page hits make sense, but some are a bit older. Most did not seem to have a page rank, but if their new it's ok.

I used Google Analytics to determine low page hits, sorted by page views. Within the sorted list are hundreds of mis-spelled pages on the low end of the "pageview" scale, in a total list of 2,726 URLs. The site only has around 1,300 pages.






Monday, September 08, 2008

Browser Analytics


I took another look at how Google Chrome is doing on the web site, or with the web site. Seems the new browser is doing good. As the attached graphic shows, in the last several days Google Chrome has now reached 1.61% of the traffic. That's not so bad for just a few days, it's already at number five in the list. Click that graphic for a larger view...


Seems like by next week it will pass both Safari and Opera and place third on the list. If I remember I'll post again next month to show how the new Browser is doing....

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Google Chrome Web Broswer


Just down loaded and started using Google Chrome and already found a bug. When I try to open my MS Office Live site, Microsoft sends me to a page saying I need to use either IE or Foirfox and it provides links to down load them? Hello, I'm using Chrome.... There's a screen shot just above, click to see a larger image.


Here is a link to down load the new broswer: http://www.google.com/chrome

Each of my sites seem to render ok, I don't see any issues.

Hmm, I just made another bug report. The pages do not always open from the top, but several inches down from the top. Clicking a link to go to a new page, the new page opens half way down its page.
Yet another bug, I think. I was out editing one of my Knol's and I noticed that there were no words underlined as misspelled. There should have been many terms 'high-lighted' as misspelled because of all the acronyms used [knol]. In fact, I see a misspelled word here that is not highlighted? Guess I will report this bug too.

A few hours later I noticed that the address bar is also used a the search bar. I came to that conculsion after not being able to find the search bar and just words typing into the address bar ~ and it worked. Now I see an artical in cnn that indicates the same thing. Google calls it the Omni Box

Monday, September 01, 2008

Decrease in Visits


This month interfacebus received the lowest visits for the year, with about 121,000 unique visitors. Just a little less then June of last year, but higher than June/July of 2006.

So visits are still flat over the last three years. Anything before 2006 is much lower than the last three years.

The web site serialphy is also stable over the last few months, but with only a few hundred hits a month. Serialphy is up over the first four months of the year.

[Text Removed 6-28-2010]

A new site was started over the last few weeks on Google Sites and is also called interfacebus, but with a different root address. This sites now has 12 total pages. A counter was just added yesterday so there is no data on site visits ~ other than a few showing today. A second site was also started, but only holds the sitemaps for the three other web sites; interfacebussitemap.

Google Sites is free......

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Google Sites


I've generated about 17 pages out on Google Sites, most are copies from my "old" Google Page Creator site. I have taken a few pages off line, but most pages are still up on the old site, with a note pointing to the new Google Sites page 'interfacebus'.

I just added the tracking code from Google Analytics, so now the pages have a counter. By Monday I should see some data, assuming anyone has found those pages yet.

I also added the code to generate a Google Sitemap for the site. Not really sure why Google has you generate a Site-map, shouldn't they know about web pages that reside on their own site?

I still have a lot of gif files out on Page Creator that I really need to move

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Web Pages Updates and Graphics


Following last weeks running of Xenu to check for 'bad' links, many of the re-directed links have been up-dated. Remember, links that are re-directed are not broken...

During this same time graphic files from my Google Page Creator site are being moved to a new storage location. To reduce server bandwidth many picture files are stored out on Google Page Creator, and not on the interfacebus server. But, Google is closing that 'beta' program so a new storage location needs to be found. Errors can occur while up-dating the html code as the pic file addresses are up-dated. Xenu will need to be run ounce again to find any of these new errors.

The Google Page Creator site also held html pages which need to be relocated. Google has a new html generation program called Google Sites. Today I added nine new pages to Google Sites, which are copies of the old Google Page Creator program. All of the new pages added today really just hold a graphic, like the previous site, but the graphic was deleted from Page Creator in favor of a link to the new page.

I'm still not happy that instead of fixing Google Page Creator, they decided to close the sites. I started my site in 2006, that's 2 years of generating a 'page rank' and other people finding my pages and linking to me. This mentality of keeping all services as beta, for years, is BS. My pages were 'in addition' to my main site, supporting the site ~ what about those people that started an on-line bussiness using Page Creator?

Here is the new address for the new site interfacebus, hit the sitemap link on the left menu bar to see all the pages. Again, these pages only hold a graphic, and their new. No pages link to them and there are no page to page links, other than the sitemap. Any page on the main site 'interfacebus.com' will still be linking to the older site.

I've also completed a few Knols in the last few weeks, but I'm not sure how to indicate how to find them. Google seems to be .... what? I don't get it. Search "knol" on Google, then search "RS232" ~ you will then find that knol, with links to the other knols; hint [RS-232].

Thursday, August 14, 2008

There are many redirects


Was it just yesterday when I indicated I didn't need to run Xenu? What was I thinking with that comment? That program just found a number of link re-directs that indicate a company (website) has been taken over by another company. I don't worry and seldom correct redirects from links that move from 'what.com' to 'what.com/eng' companies do that crap all the time. But, the ones I noted seemed to move from one company to another companies web site ~ I guess times are hard all over.

The report contains a number of sections, and 're-directs' is just one of those reports. I fixed the 'bad' ones and saved the others. I did not review the "bad links" section; because, mostly that just means the site is down. I did find three sites that were redirected to the server which is not good. When a site redirects to the server that is running ads it means the site is history ~ those links were removed.

Many of these sites were already linked from my site as 'rel=no follow', which means I was telling the search engines not to follow the links, or the link is not really there (to the computer) so my site does not get pinged.

I'll never understand why some companies re-direct so often, it's like they don't get the book-mark button. One company e-mailed me a few years ago; you must change the link on this page to 'what-ever.com' [it's important]; ok; but, by the way your linked on a dozen other pages as this, and this, and this company ~ ! There is one company that always stands out over the last few years, well really two companies that always have bad links ~ I just delete them now. Why link to some one if you can't find what your looking for, or you get a 404 [page not found code].

Our incoming visits are reduced, so let's change our address so people can no longer find us. What? Yea we don't need all the sites that link to use, our page rank or any incoming links from other pages, the 'bad link we'll make us better......


Who runs these sites or their web masters? Somebody just does not get it.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Time to spider the site again


This week end I'll run the Xenu spider again to check for bad links. Some time after that I'll run the GsiteCrawler to generate an xml site map to upload to Google web-master tools [after I fix any issues found by the Xenu crawler]. I never run a crawler during normal office hours, as they put a strain on the server. Both Crawlers have to check each page on the server; or 1523 active pages and 209 inactive pages.

I've updated 1,440 pages since the Xenu program was run, but most have been html up-dates [a few gif files may be included in that count]. However; I've hand checked most pages over that time so I should not find that many issues. I was running the spider program once a month, but it seemed to miss a few issues so I've been hand checking links. The last check by the program indicated 5,978 links

Twenty new pages were added to the site since 6/7/08, so it's about time for a Google site map via GsiteCrawler. There may be a few page-to-page link updates that have been made as well, but not many ~ should make a more up to date site-map regardless.

Most of the page up-dates are due to one or more of these issues [most updated at the same time / page]:

Java script code change for Google Analytics [page visit counter]
Java script code change for Google Ads
Removal of all Java Script code for Google Referral Ads [program terminated]
Removal of two different meta tags [html coding issues, redundant un-required code]
Re-direct gif links as Google pages go out of service [Google web site terminated]
Java script code change for the Google Search Bar [ Code up-date, but not required]
Non-US ['dot'com] pages getting the html rel 'no follow' code [html non visible change]

The attached pic is of a Georgia map indicating 188 visits from that country so far this year. Russia just invaded them.....

Thursday, August 07, 2008

edison software program review

I down loaded and installed edison from Verdiem tonight based on an article I saw. What a waste of time that was, and now they have my e-mail address.

The program was to make my computer go green by giving me more control over how it operated when I wasn't using it, when it should go to sleep and so on. I was going to make a smaller carbon foot-print and help the environment ~ or not.

I clicked on the schedule tab to set my time when I use the computer, it indicates the 'non-work time' is already set for you ~ how the hell does the program know that? The 'work time' is adjustable but fixed for the days you select, so you can select 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. My computer usage is 5am to 7am M-F and 6pm to 8pm M-F, but you can't select two different time frames. Plus, Saturdays and Sundays are also different, but again the time frame is fixed regardless of the day.

How is this different than just having the OS put the computer in sleep mode? edison is a joke, plus I have yet one more program running in my task bar consuming my expensive memory.

I do not recommend using edison by Verdiem because I just don't see how it benifits a user. Yes it tells you your kWh usage or saving or what ever, but so what. The program is taking up $50 of my RAM to do the same thing that Windows Vista already does. Yes it "seems" to calculate a savings if I set it to turn my PC off while I'm still using it, but that's not why I purchased a $2000 computer.

I only opened it, noticed the lack of options and closed the program two minutes later. I did not detect any options that made it appear any different than the options with the MS OS, and I plan to remove it once I submit this posting. Any e-mails to my gmail account will be flagged as spam.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Google Page Creater


It appears that Goggle is dumping their original free web pages call Google Page Creator. I don't know if it was much of a surprise. The program lacked any real tools and sort of appeared as a toy compared to what Microsoft was offering [Live Spaces]. So, the message I saw indicated that some time this year the site would close and all web pages would be moved over to their new site called Google Sites. Yea, I don't think much of their new site either.

So for the last two years I've had a few dozen web pages located out on Google Page Creator. That's two years of web history that will be lost when they decide to close down that program. Two years of gaining external web links and of course a page rank. Now any new page I start on 'Sites' begins with a page rank of zero, and no other external sites linking in.

Worse still, I was storing about 50 picture files out there that interfacebus was using with in that site. I must have that number of pages on interfacebus that linked to those pic files [to save bandwidth] that have to be updated. Which one of my pages used those pic files? Which pages linked to the html files out there?

The new site is here, but its just a blank page or so, as I'm still trying to figure out how to use 'Sites. I hate it already, but I need an external site....

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Web Page Usage


Last October I posted some data on the number of pages for each of the web sites I run. So 9 months later I figured I would recount and post the new data, which follows below. I don't track the information, but new graphic files are also always being added.

Notes on the Chart.
Unique Visits = Total different people per month
Visits = Total number of people including retuning visits, on a per month basis.
Pages = Number of pages viewed, normally 2 or 3 times the number of visits.
Bandwidth = server bandwidth, relative only to its self.
Click on the graphic for a larger view.

Page Data.
1519 web pages, interfacebus.com
0093 web pages, serialphy.com
0389 blog pages, interfacebus.blogspot.com [this blog]
0098 blog pages, serial-interface-buses.blogspot.com [Blog; new pages additions to interfacebus.com]
0025 blog pages, interfacebus.spaces.live.com [Blog, early version of "what's new"]
0012 web pages, Google Base [Holds a few articles, and pic files]
0002 web pages, Google Knol [Holds articles]
0075 web pages, interfacebus.com [Orphan pages, no longer used]
0116 web pages, interfacebus.com [wrong address pages to capture mis-spelled words]
2382 total pages residing on the internet

That's an increase of 554 web pages over the last nine months. Now keep in mind that some of these pages really don't bring in any traffic. The 166 pages that capture a mis-spelled web address really only work for a few months, as the link shows at the top of some forum. As the post with the mis-spelled address falls off the front page, less people will find it.

But the Blogs really contain more pages than shown. Blogs archive once a week, or month, or year. So every month the Blog automatically generates a new page for all pages in that month. Each year a Blog will auto generate 13 new pages; one per month, and one per year.

On the other hand, many pages have been enhanced or upgraded over the last year. It's not just about the number of pages, but how well those pages address your topic. Most new pages that get added are small and contain little data for the first few months because I know the search engine needs time to even find the new listing. So I up-load the new web address, add what data I have and get back to it when possible, knowing that I don't want to miss the search engine spider.

Chart Data
Unique visits are down over the last few months, but we my be in a recession? Visits, of course, track unique visits to some degree so the decline is expected. Again, page views track site visits, so page views should decline at least two times as fast as page views. A site visitor will not view 2 or three web pages if they never visit a site.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Google's Knol interface


I signed up for Knol from Google today. I had heard about it a few months ago, but at that time it was closed to most users. Knol is open to the general population now, and I signed up for it.

I assume Knol is Google's answer to Wikipedia, which is good but some what odd. Many search terms on Google return a listing from Wiki as the first listing on the results page. So why not come up with their own free social content collaboration 'encyclopedia' web portal. Of course the Wikipedia site gets a lot of bad press, so it could be that by next year the Knol site will see the same press, but it may depend on how they post those pages on their results page.

Any way I posted two articles today. Both need some help, but I posted them to get them out there. There should not be many people finding the pages at these stage, so it should not be a worry.

I posted one Knol on the Secure Digital card [flash memory] and one Knol on the declining RS-232 interface [re-posted from this blog]. However, neither posting shows up in a search yet? I did just see a link to verify my name, so I went ahead and did that, I got a call 10 seconds after hitting the submit button.

The attach picture depicts web visits to interfacebus from the Nerthlands so far this year.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Cuil Search Engine


I tried out the new search engine that was released today. A few ex-employees from Google came up with cuil, which seems to still need a little work.

Like we need another search engine any way. The attached graphic is a partial list of visits from robots and spiders for the month of July. Note the server bandwidth the search robots take up. Odd that the Cuil robot did not show up in the list this month.

www.interfacebus.com does show up in the list, but does that mean that the last time the site was spidered was a month ago? And a search for interfacebus only produces a link on the 6th page.

I saw a number of compliants about their search results, and I agree with all of them.
1. The site was off-line or did not respond.
2. The graphics shown with the results do not relate to the listing
--- My site came in with a GM logo, I don't display anyones Trade Marked Logo.
3. Duplicate site listing on the same page, multi-page links from the same site
--- Like the old Yahoo search results, with page after page of the same site in the results.
4. Results returned link farms, like key word stuffing working again.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Annual US Wind Power Capacity


Here is a chart showing Annual Wind Capacity for the US [United States], note the large increase in the last few years. So what is T. Boone Pickens [blog link] talking about, there seems to be a lot of wind power activity.

Related; Wind Power Capacity per state map. Hmm somebody just made a comment that this is only 1%, I'm sure he's right ~ but still a large increase in using wind power. The numbers are going up, and that's what counts

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Wind Resources in the US


The attached map of the United States shows the available wind resources in the US. The map colors indicate the amount of wind power available, with blue indicating the highest wind speeds. The color red indicates the next highest wind speed, followed by purple, pink, and orange. Map credit; US Department of Energy.

Compare this map with the one that shows Wind Power Capacity. The two maps seem to track, as the states with the highest wind speed also have the most wind generation plants.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Googlebot Crawl Stats


Here is the latest graph showing Googlebot activity in the last 90 days crawling interfacebus.com. It appear that the web site was off-line back in April and the spider stopped coming by for a few days. At most the site was off-line for less than a half day.

The same page that provides this data also shows a bar chart of pages with page rank 'PR'. There are four columns; High, Medium, Low, and Not yet assigned. I can't really tell if I have any pages ranked as high (above PR 5), as I can only see a sliver of color. Medium (PR 5) may contain a few pages, at least the index page. Most pages show as low (below PR5). What I don't see is any pages listed as 'not yet assigned', which has always showed many pages in the past. So Google has ranked all or most of the new pages that have been added to the web site ~ and that tells me I have stopped adding pages at the same rate I had been.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Link checking and SEO stuff


Hmm, I've been hand checking some pages and have found some bad links on the web site. Maybe I rely to much on Xenu to check the links on the site.

I see some old re-directs that have been fixed, just to clear the redundant listings. But what I'm more concerned about are the dozen pages found that point to the isp, indicating that the web site is gone. I assume that the Xenu robot does not detect those changes ...... That's not good. Still a few bad links out of 5,000 isn't that bad.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Open Source Office Applications


To my surprise I found a few free office type applications today (web based). Server side applications are fine, assuming we don't lose the internet connection. This link provides a listing of office tools, both local and server side.

Here are the addresses to these new application;
http://www.spresent.com/
http://product.thinkfree.com/
http://www.zoho.com/

The 'zoho' seems to show the most promise, I'll down-load or sign in now....... I'm in!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Is there a Browser War?


It looks like it just may be a matter of time before the war is over or comes to a draw. The data from the web site indicates that Firefox only inches ahead and only in sub-percentages. Seems a small increase in Firefox usage.

After a 1,000,000 visits Firefox still gets the same 28% of users. What is that a few thousand new users over the last few months? I started a new poll, left of screen for Browser usage.....

Btw I use both IE and Firefox, so my usage is 50/50. Both Browsers are set up to open multi-windows on start-up. The previous topic was "The Browser Battle Update", from 4/9/08.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Page Rank & Listing of Manufacturers

One of the sections of the site is a listing of Manufacturers in alphabetic order, instead of by topic. The alphabetic listing of Manufacturers spans 94 pages. The section received 1,255 pageviews in the last 30 days, and 8,205 page views this year. The alphabetic index page, which also happens to be letter 'A' receives most of the hits, and the rest are spread over the alphabet.

The section help people find companies when they might not be sure of the name, and it indicates who may have purchased the company if it changed hands. It's a lot of work keeping all the links active and valid, but it does seem to serve a purpose.

Any way, several months ago I broke up many of the pages to make them smaller, reducing the number of links per page. The new pages started with a zero page rank, which is normal, but they still have not recovered. Worse still, I checked one page today and the content didn't even show up during a search ~ meaning the page was not even indexed by Google.

Pages with a zero page rank:
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Amd'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Asq'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Be'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Bl'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Br'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Cm'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Con'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Cp'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Dem'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Ec'. html code updated,links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'El'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Em'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Fm'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'G'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Gen'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Gl'. links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Go'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Hb'.
html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Hj'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Il'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'In'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Int'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Intel'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Jd'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Ke'.
html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Ki'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'L'.
html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Mo'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Nik'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Oo'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'P'.
html code updated, links checked ~ One bad link..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Po'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Ram'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Ren'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Sen'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Sig'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Sk'.
html code updated, links checked ~ One bad link..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Sp'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Tb'.
html code updated, links checked ~ One bad link..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Th'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Us'.
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'V'.
html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Ve'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Vi'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Vm'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Wi'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..
Engineering Manufacturers starting with 'Z'. html code updated, links checked ~ no issues..

Wow, 47 pages with a Google page Rank issue ~ that's not good. But what is the problem with the pages?

I did notice that the entire section declares xhtml 'strict' coding, so I updated a few to 'transitional' coding today. The pages will validate declaring 'transitional' coding, but that can't be the issue or they would all have a zero page rank.

Any non '.com' web site link has a "rel = nofollow" in the link so even if the link were bad Goggle would ignore it. The 'rel=no follow' must be on 20% of the links, making them save regardless.

I'm running Xenu tonight to check the site for bad links, but that program will not indicate if some other site has taken over an address ~ so I'll have to hand check each link to insure the page opens to the site listed. Xenu reports 8 bad links (0.13%), with 5937 good url's.

I hand checked a few pages, see the text above, but I don't see any issues. I don't mind so much about losing the page rank, but I would like to have the data searchable. I could be missing a number of visitors because the page are in Google's supplemental listing.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

New Sitemap Up-loaded


Using the GsiteCrawler program two separate XML site maps were generated, one for interfacebus.com and one for serialphy.com. Google reports 109 urls (pages) uploaded for serialphy and 1673 urls for interfacebus.

Looks like more than 50 new pages have been added over the last 3 months, sense the last sitemap generation. However the site's HTML site map was updated as new pages were added.

Google Analytics reports 985,815 visits, with 1,880,906 page views. Both of those numbers are down from the same time last year, by 15,000 visits (it was off-line yesterday).....

GsiteCrawler is free like half a dozen other programs that generate xml sitemaps.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Digital Video Connector Identification

I got an email a few hours ago from some one trying to identify a connector on the back of a PC card. The video connector appeared to be DVI connector, but had 35 pins instead of 29 pins.

For the first few minutes I was wondering what the connector was, but after a few clicks on the web site I replied to the e-mail with an answer. I found two other connector styles with the correct amount of pins, and that looked just like a DVI plug:
Enhanced Video Connector, EVC.
Plug and Display, P & D. released in 1996

I think both these interfaces are dated, but many obsolete interfaces are still in production, ISA cards for example. Any way there are newer video interfaces out there to replace even the DVI bus; HDMI, and UDI to name two.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

USB 3.0 Specification

Looks like the new USB standard is due out soon. Other than the transfer rate (4.8 Gbit/s, 600 MB/s) and some data about the new connectors I have not found any other data on the specification yet.

USB 3.0 products are not due out until at least 2009, so you still have awhile.

Update; so there are a few products starting to be introduced now, as of 9/09. Of course my PC will not take advantage of of 3.0 USB device and I don't have any planes on getting a new PC this year either.

So;
Description of USB 2.0.
Description of USB 3.0.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Web Page Code Optimizing and SEO stuff


No new page addresses in the last few days, so I'm enhancing some of the existing pages.

Google came out with some enhanced script for their Analytics software, so I've been updating that code on the web pages. The code is a tad larger than their old code but it does more (I think). Google Analytics is used to track site visitors and provides a lot of data.

While updating that code, I also update the java script code that displaces the ads on each page. The new java scrip is only half as big as the previous code. So I save several hundreds of bytes per page with each new up-load [first post on topic; Page Optimization].

SEO Up-dates:
Images ~ I've also added several new graphic files in the last few days, mostly on the new pages, and this is why; Hits from Image Referrals.
Links ~ I'm up-dating the link text for page to page links (the underlined blue text), to insure that it's descriptive. Don't link to a new page with 'more info', use a descriptive link.
Bounce Rate ~ Trying to decrease the bounce rate as a page gets updated. When the page has a high Bounce Rate [click away to another web site], I spend the extra time to insure all possible page to page links are there, and keeping people on the site.
Back-Links ~ Increase the external links that point to the main Engineering web site [this links counts]. Note that the links associates the term 'Engineering' and 'web' to interfacebus.com. There are two ways to go here; always associate a single term with your site/page, or associate the page with a different term each time [with in a topic].
Meta-Tags ~ Back in 12/14/07 Google Sitemaps indicated that 208 pages on the site had Meta Tags that were considered short [need more descriptive text]. The current report only indicates 70 pages with a short meta description. It may be less than that, because you can't determine the date of the report or which pages were last checked.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Promote your site on the DMOZ data Base


I requested that serialphy be included into the DMOZ Directory [Open Directory Project]. Years ago it was really important to be listed in DMOZ, which is what Google built its directory from. These days it hard to even find a link to the Google directory, it's all about just using the search bar now.

But because the DMOZ directory is free to down load, any one can build there own web directory. Which means that your site listing could end up in a number of different search directories. So, I still recommend getting your site listed in the Open Directory. Not really sure how much directory are used any longer.....

interfacebus.com has been listed in DMOZ for years now, and serialphy should be large enough to be included, but I won't know for a number of weeks.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Promote your site via News Groups


How can I promote my web site:
Using the usenet newsgroups is a good way to promote your website. There are thousands of different types of newsgroups that cover just about any topic you could think of. So there will be many different groups you could contribute to, and get the word out about your web site.

There are a number of ways to read and write to the news groups. You could down load any number of newsgroup readers off the web; I use XNEWS. You could interact via your web browser using Google Groups, which I also use. Or you could access the news groups via Outlook Express which normally comes free on a new computer.

If you end up using Google Groups you will find additional discussion groups not found in usenet. Or, XNEWS will display usenet groups, while Google Groups will display usenet and groups hosted by Google. Starting your own group, under all most any topic, is easy using Google Sites.

So how do you promote your site; find a group and write a post. If you can't think of any thing to post, just sit back and answer some one's posting leaving your site name as your signature [the last line in your reply.

I've posted 447 messages since 2005, leaving the interfacebus site as my signature in a few cases and this blog address as my 'sig' in almost all cases. Most people will appreciate your reply, but not visit your site. Of the small percentage of people that do check out your site some may result in an even smaller segment that returns, but thats what you want.

Check Google Groups for "interfacebus.com" and you will find that the search returns 1,200 pages ~ that's not me. That number is from other people posting a link to my site, that's the power of promotion.

The down side to posting in either usenet and to a smaller extent Google Groups is that replies to your post my be completely negative [Flame]. A lot of people 'live' in these newsgroups and jump from group to group flaming posters. I get 'flamed' once a month or so for a posting, but I only track a posting for about a month.
Todays Flame;
Original post: Why does my site not have a ranking?
My Reply: Duplicate content, check for ...... ~ (he did not leave a url, which is common)
2nd person: How can you know that..
3rd person: Lets rename this spam.
4th person: No place for overt advertising (left to me because of my sig.)
-- I just answered this guys question, and I get all these replies to my post and not the guy looking for help.

In usenet you can block these bozo's so you never see the reply after the first one, but you can't with Google. How ever, using Google you can read all their previous posting. Very quickly you find (in most cases) that their replies carry no meaning.

Read this post from Nov. 2007 and you find me posting my site address [I do not recommend you doing this]. The first reply is a flamer, but three other readers come in to denounce the flame posting. Note the flame guy never responded, as he went off to anther group. ~

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Web Page Bounce Rate


Should you care what your site's Bounce Rate is?

Bounce Rate is a figure that describes a visitors preference to leave your site or push into another page within the site. The Home page of interfacebus has a bounce rate of 33%, or 33% of the people that find that page click away [2008 figure]. However; a visitor may click onto another site run by interfacebus.com as shown in the attached graphic. For example the lower part of the graphic shows 5 bars that indicate the percentage of people that click on those links [which happen to be hidden under the bars].

The first bar presents people viewing the FAQ page, which happens to be local to the site [0%]. The sitemap used by interfacebus, indicated by the next bar, is located off site and would constitute a bounce [but 0% of visitors viewed it]. The next bar represents this blog, not a local page [5.1%]. The next bar is the blog representing new pages added to the web site [5.1%]. The final bar is a resume but is local.

In addition to those three possible external pages, a person may also use the search bar. The page returned from a search is external to this web site and would also be a bounce, even if they click on another local page returned by the search [5.1%].

So the index page has a 33% bounce rate, but 15% of people just go to another page hosted by this site resulting in an over bounce rate of 15%.

Now the overall bounce rate for the web site is 70% [all pages combined]. Is that bad, I doubt it, seems people find the right page they're looking for on the first search or hit to the site. However going over each page would just be to time consuming.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Are we really running out of oil


The short answer is yes, the US is running out of oil. Note the graph on proven oil reserves, and the its decline. We now have just as much oil that we had in the 1940, with just a few more cars on the highway. The spike around 1970 must be Prudhoe bay, but I did not verify that. Oil production at Prudhoe Bay has been declining since 1989 [peak oil]

Oil consumption increases 2% a year, so to break even you need to find at least 2% more oil each year. The graph indicates the reverse as proven oil reserves are decreasing as we consume it faster than we discover it. The previous post showed a chart of US production which is different that proven reserves [oil in the ground].

Related posts; Why we import oil, Peak oil, Why gas costs so much.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Why we Import Oil


The US imports oil because we consume more oil than we can produce. The graphic shows US oil production from 1920 to 2008. Peak oil in the US was reached in 1973. Peak oil is the point of maximum oil production.

These days we produce the same amount of oil we were producing in 1946, regardless of how many wells we have in operation. The numbers are thousand barrels

Data source eia.doe.gov.



Other Posts on topic: Why gas costs so much, Peak oil and the end of gas,

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Why does gas cost so much


You may be surprised but a barrel of oil cost about the same all around the world, within a few dollars. When the cost goes up in the US for a barrel of oil, it goes up the same amount all over the world and it has zero to do with a US company. World Crude Oil Prices.

Now the cost of gas at the pump varies widely around the world, and there are really only two main reasons for that, taxes and subsidies.

TAXES: Take the US as the base line and you find we pay 19% of the price of gas in taxes, but in Europe the tax on gas is around 70%. Remember both Europe and the US pay about the same for a barrel of oil, but at the pump the price difference is massive. And it doesn’t matter if the oil is pumped from the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico; cost at the well head is much lower than value in a barrel.

SUBSIDIES: Many oil producing Middle Eastern countries and other OPEC producing countries subsidize their oil. Even though the value of the oil is worth $100/barrel for example, oil rich countries sell their oil to their population at a much reduced rate ~ pennies on the dollar. There’s a very good reason why some countries can afford to reduce the cost of oil (or gas) to their populations.

The cost of oil is not set by the countries that produce the oil and it is not set by the US Oil companies (as much as you would like to think). The cost of a barrel of oil is set by three major international petroleum exchanges , [NYMEX, IPE, SIMEX]. So if it still cost $20 to produce a barrel of oil from the well, its then worth $100 [per NYMEX] once it gets placed into a 50 gallon barrel for sell. So if you happen to be a major oil producer and the oil companies are nationalized [run by the country], why not keep the cost down in your own country, as you still make 80% profit for any oil sold abroad.

The US did this as well back in the 80’s after the 1973 oil embargo, as they fixed the price that US drilled oil could sell for even as the world price was going up. Yes the Oil companies subsidized to cost of your oil for a decade.

Let’s review with some made up numbers;

The cost to drill oil in Texas is $20/barrel for example, $30 in the Alaska, $40 in the North Sea, or $10/barrel in Qatar. Numbers are fabricated to illustrate the cost of drilling in different environments. The value of oil is $100/barrel per SIMEX. So no matter the location of the drilled oil the petroleum company makes a good profit [for now]. The oil companies are not setting the price, and although OPEC did set the prices in the seventies they only set production rates now.

OPEC is divided into two camps, one camp would like the price kept high while the other would like a lower cost for oil [but neither set the price]. The countries that would like the higher price now need the revenue and have limited resources in the ground. The countries that want the price kept low have massive resources of oil and do not want the value of their oil in the ground to decrease. The US and other countries using E85 and switching to Hybrid cars would decimate the long term value of their oil reserves as consumption decreased over time.

One comment I heard the other day was that we could boycott a particular gas company and that would force the price of oil down. Unfortanitly that would only serve to put a few gas stations out of business. The oil companies could just sell their oil on the open market and run more imported oil through their refinery, so in the end the you boycott oil from Ecuador with out really knowing it.

Really want cheaper gas prices at the pump, stop driving and reduce consumption.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Web Page Strength & Importance


I came across backlinkwatch.com while searching the web. This site gives you all the links pointing to your site [back links]. Of course Google will do that as well, but this site provides two other pieces of data. First, the site indicates if the incoming link has an attached 'rel=nofollow' tag to the link, indicating that no page rank is passed with the link. Second the site shows the total number out going links on the page that contains your link. The more links on a page means that a smaller percentage of Page Rank [PR] is passed in each outbound link. The site found 5,158 backlinks for interfacebus.com. From the Back-link report I found tagurls.com which ... hmm, not really sure what it's telling me. But I found seomoz.org which gives an indication of page strength [SEO site]. interfacebus has a page strength of 6/10 per their report. Than cloudalicio.us was found which shows the number of tags [links?] occur over time on del.icio.us. Also checked out Technorati, guess they track blog activity.

Then I found this one http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/reqs_bestpractices/laws_regs/copyright.shtml.

Hmm, while interfacebus.com was rated 6 of 10.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Referring Sites


Like the posting from March 14 about Backlinks, here is another view. Referring sites bring a lot of traffic to interfacebus. The graphic is Referring sites by month, averaging over 10,000 visits per month [13,174 visits last month]. So every month the site gets an automatic 10,000 visits generating 20,000 page views per month.

Guess the previous post was more geared to incoming back-links from my own sites, while this shows all websites.

The bounce rate, or chance a person only visits one page is 68.04%. The average bounce rate seems ok, as the links are coming in to a specific page. The percentage of new visitors is 79.69%, meaning all those links keep bringing in new people, or people that have never used the site before. When New vs. Returning visitors is charted I find 24,000 returning visitors @ 4/1/06, and up to 49,000 @ 4/30/08. But because the site is always growing New visitors are also increasing from 100,000 to about 160,000 over the same time period.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Go Green, Save Gas, Increase Your Car's MPG


Want to reduce your weekly Gas bill; slow down.

I saw an old 2006 report from Consumer Reports that indicated a Toyota got 5mpg [miles per gallion] better at 65mph [miles per hour] than at 75mph, and another 5mpg better when travailing at 55mph. Or, change your maximum speed from 75mph to 55mph and go 10 more miles on a gallon of gas [$3.80 for my car].

My vehicle runs about 19.9 miles per gallon, nominal combined city highway. This week I figured I would put those numbers to the test. I reduced my maximum speed to 75 mph highway, consistently via the cruise control. I won't say how fast I was going previously, but I was never passed. Anyway, travailing back and fourth to work this week; 22 miles highway / 8 miles city, I only saw the gas consumption number grow to 20.4 mpg. Half a mile per gallon isn't any good, my time is more important than that.

Than I realized that my computer was averaging the mpg over the last computer reset point, 3 hundred miles ago. I reset the cars computer and drove home using RT 1 instead of US95. The highway had some construction which pushed me to RT1. The maximum speed on US1 was 50mph, I kept it under 60, but there were street lights too.

I ended the trip home with a 25mpg reading. Less than what was reported by Consumer Reports, but the several lights on the trip hurt me.. Over the next several days I'll keep the speed at or under 75mph and stay on the highway. But remember I started at 19.9mpg, less than 17mpg if I punch it.

I drive a supercharged V8 Ford Mustang with a Roush supercharger, the chip was changed out and it requires premium gas to provide over 400 hp [horse power]. One trip home is not much of an experiment, so I'll go back to I95 and stay under 75mph over the next week. I'll post the changes in miles/gallon as I put more miles on the car and computer. Check to see if any comments were added to this posting [those are the updates]. Save money and slow down on the highway.....

Aerodynamic drag increases with the square of speed; The faster you go, the more energy it takes to sustain that speed [mpg]

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Military Robots


Ever notice the growing number of robotic systems that are coming out of the military. There appears to be a 2001 law pushing the number of un-manned systems. Guess that's why DARPA was running that unmanned vehicle contest every year.

Many of the robotic systems seem redundant, but I guess most are low production run test beds. The flying robots seem to be the most numerous being developed.
The military even has a road-map on development; it's a large pdf file [the link no longer works]. A number of systems are all ready deployed, with hundreds of robots operating in the field. Wow, flight hours for Unmanned Aerial Systems was 160,000 hours in 2006.

Most of the systems appear to be unarmed, so far....

Friday, April 25, 2008

Peak Oil and the end of Gas


Figured I would post something other than web site stats for a change.

The Peak Oil theory has been around for decades and relates to how oil fields produce oil. Basically an oil field's production follows a bell curve. There's a ramp up period, followed by maximum oil production [peak oil], then a gradual decline in production. The term Peak Oil is used to describe an individual oil field, an output from a country, or the entire planet's production.

The US reached peak oil in the seventies, and oil production has been slowly declining, and yes, that includes the North slope and Gulf oil fields. However the US still produces a great deal of oil, but we also consume three times that amount. And yes we still find new oil fields, but when you read the data you find that we consume more than we find [net oil in the ground is decreasing].

So anyway, the debate over the last decade has been when will the world hit peak oil. What year will global oil production flatten out or start to decline. The other tick is that usage increases 2% per year, so how could usage increase at the same time production stalls. Most countries have already reached their own peak oil, so production is falling in almost evey oil producing country. I think world production has been flat for three years now.

Of course there are those people that would say we could just discover some great new field that would save us. Sure, but it will be 400 miles of some coast in 4 miles of ocean and cost 100 billion to produce. All the cheap oil has already been found, others would say. The cost is never going to come down, in the long run. Some would say we will never run out of oil, which will be fine because oil is used for a great many products. But as long as cars run on gas......

So what, well a number of people have predicted that peak oil will occur between 2005 and 2010. Like I said, I think world production has been flat the last few years so I'd guess I shoot for 2006. Regardless of what the price of a barrel oil goes to, consumption will exceed production...

I see 500,000 hybrids have been sold to date; however, many large hybrids don't really save that much gas. err, they are only several mpg better than a normal car. The normal size hybrid cars do a lot better and get twice the mileage ~ up to 50mpg. The full hybrids, or battery cars are not slated to be released until 2010. The cars running almost completely off batteries get well over 100mpg.

I think the only thing that will slow the coming of peak oil is the cost. Now that gas is $3.50 people will drive less and consume less oil, so demand does not increase, or reduces [same thing happened in the 80's].

The web sites relating to peak oil have jumped over the last few years, as more people discover the issue. If your driving a large gas guzzler start thinking about dumping it before it's value drops to $0. I really want to predict gas lines in 2009, but with the price increasing consumption may drop off.

The graphic shows wind generated power for 2007 in the US. There's been a large increase over the last 5 years; but remember, power generation plants burn coal not oil ~ cars burn oil... Those states that have no wind production ... there are other maps that show wind speed, the states in white don't have 'much' wind.

There's a poll on the left side of the page to indicate when peak oil will be reached..