National Do Not Call Registry

I've made my first complaint to the FCC for a company calling my home phone. TruGreen called tonight at 8:15, saying they saw the condition of my lawn and left some papers in the front door. I tried to explain that they were not allowed to call me, but I got the standard response ~ I just work here, never heard of the 'Do Not Call list', but I will add you to our don't call list. That's fine, I said, and I'll add you to the FCC's list too.

It's the same response I've gotten for the previous two calls from two other companies. Well I guess three unwanted calls is my limit. One earlier caller indicated that she just dialed my number, after I told her she was not allowed to call. err, if she could dial my number than she is allowed to call me. I should have reported her too.

To sign up just go out to the National Do Not Call Registry web site and add your phone number and an e-mail address. It that easy to file a complaint as well. I think I'll make a point to just get the company name and number and up-load it to the FCC.

Web Site Sitemap

I took a few minutes to update the site map, located off the main page. It's been about a month since the last sitemap up-date. I only had time to add a few new links that have been added to the web-site over the last few months. I just kept finding a number of redundant link or page entires inside the sitemap that needed to be corrected / deleted. So I ended up deleting those redundant pages instead of adding new pages that now appear in the website.

So the site map is now a bit smaller in size because of the reduction of redundant links, but at the same time contains a few of the newer pages added to the site in the last few months.

Optimizing Page Code

Following yesterdays blog about reducing monthly bandwidth by 259M Bytes by implementing the new adsense code, I've added the new code to yet another 9 pages. These would be the next nine best performing pages after the first four or so listed yesterday. The pages include: PCIe, Wire Color Codes, IDE description, SATA description, PCI Bus, Voltage Thresholds, Interface Buses, and Firewire.

There was one other page that was updated based on how it was placing, but because it was an old page address I do not list it here.

Although these pages do get less pages views then the previous 4 that were updated, when combined they get many more. So I expect better than a 259M Byte reduction per month in bandwidth. The addition of the two up-dates should produce a reduction in server bandwidth of better than 600MB/ month. Normal Bandwidth per day is around 460 MB, so the monthly bandwidth was reduced by more than one day.

This is yesterdays blog page;
http://interfacebus.blogspot.com/2008/01/page-optimization.html

Page Optimization

I traded out the older Google Adsense code on the top four viewed pages of the web site with their new code. The new java ad code is about half the size it was before. The older code required 577 characters, while the newer code only requires 292 characters.

The top four pages are AWG sizes, Index page, CanBus, and the DVI bus. Looking back at some random month, their combined pages totaled 37,881 page views.

The difference in ad code is a reduction of 285 characters. Or 285 x 8 bits per character = 2,280 bytes. For one typical month that equates to a savings of 86,368,680 bytes; 2,280 bytes x 37,881 page views. An 86MB saving per month is pretty good for 5 minutes of work. It's a faster download and less of a strain on my server.

Wait a minute there are three ads per page, or a difference of 855 characters not 285.
So 3 x 86,368,680 = 259,106,040 bytes.... 259MBytes reduction in bandwidth.

General Page Up-dates

I think I've blogged about part of this before, but I'm in the middle of a general web site update. I can only track a few changes at a time with out lossing my copy/paste funtion and the up-date taking much longer.

So the three major changes that are going on from about Dec 15, is;

1. Changing the Google search bar so the search function defaults to search from interfacebus.com first. Also the new search page contains a banner for interfacebus that is view-able, while the older one was not. I noticed a few months ago that a buddy of mine did not realize he was searching the web or my page because the page was to busy. So it's better to start the search from interfacebus, and I display a banner.

2. Some pages have to many html comments. These comments are un-seen, but they effect the down-load so they are being deleted, maybe about 1/5 of the site pages. Again, the code comments are not displayed on the site, it's a down-load issue

3. I also up-date the copy right date, not that it matters

4. I don't touch pages that need a content up-date, I'll made those changes later ~ when I have content to add.

5. There was one other change I was making, but I'll stop making that upgrade. Within the manufacturing pages, I was moving the 'all links' index for a letter to a 'next page link' at the bottom of each page. Well I have three Complaints so far, that don't like that, I'll stop doing that

Google Search Bar Usage

The Google AnSense report for the last year is showing a pretty good increase in the number of people using the Google Search bar on interfacebus.com. Over the last few months I've been adding the search bar to more and more pages. I may have a few hundred pages to add the bar to, but I'm not really sure. The search bar must be on at least a 1,000 pages by now.

I can't post the revenue because I have not received payment for December yet. However the earnings have been increasing as well. Of course, I still have low earning days but the trend is increasing.

The added benefit; visitors to the site can perform a site search regardless of the landing page. In addition to adding the bar to new pages, I've also been changing the bar on existing pages so the search defaults to the site and not the web.

If you are an AdSense user I highly recommend adding the search bar for those very reasons: you make money and you assist your traffic find what they are searching for.

The amount of money I make via searches is [very] small compared to what the site generates from running ads ~ that chart includes searchs on this blog as well......

How to Promote a Web Site

So the numbers are in for 2007, unique visitors have increased by 100,000 from last year.
AWSTATS
Unique Visits = 1,651,854,
# of Visits = 2,354,985,
Page Views = 4,063,901

I guess any increase is good, kind of hoping for a bit more. Checking the what's new to the Site blog, I see 35 posts over the last few months. Most of those posts represent more than one new page address that was added. For example, this post listed 6 new pages. So come January or February these new pages will start to get a google page rank.

By moving some of the graphics off my main site and compressing html code I've been able to keep the server bandwidth constant between 2006 [136.57GBytes] and 2007 [140.44G Bytes]. However; I did receive more page views in 2006 @ 4,227,644.

One reason for an increase in bandwidth while having a decrease in page views: I've been adding the Google search bar to all the pages on the site. The search bar code contains 1927 characters, or 15,416 bytes.

Now I have to figure out why I have 200,000 fewer page views. I have had a lot of server issues this year. I have also been reducing physical page sizes, by moving information to new pages. So many pages have just one specific topic, so visitors may be hitting the exact information searched for on the first hit to the site.

Google Analytics Traffic Sources
Google Search Engine = 1,764,196
Wikipedia = 17,938
Direct Traffic = 131,634
Images.google = 5,361
My blog = 938
Stumbleupon = 742
mail.google = 443
Groups.google = 444

Related posts:
http://interfacebus.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-web-site.html
http://interfacebus.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-google-site-map-upload.html
http://interfacebus.blogspot.com/2007/12/web-site-status.html
http://interfacebus.blogspot.com/2007/11/awstata.html