Web Page Updates

With the addition of the page covering Manufacturers of Thermal Chambers, I also added those 'few' companies to the appropriate OEM alphabetic listing. While adding those new links I also noted pages that contain an old google search bar or pages that could use a new referral link, or pages that still contain html comments [to save server bandwidth]. Pages that were up-dated in the
Alphabetic Manufacturers section;

Manufacturers 'Br',
Manufacturers 'Ea',
Manufacturers 'Ec',
Manufacturers 'El',
Manufacturers 'Emco',
Manufacturers Eon,
Manufacturers 'Tele',

Two additional companies were added to the PON IC's manufacturers page. A few words were added to the FTTH Description page, now linking to the Ethernet in the First Mile page. A number of Engineering Acronym pages were updated, this being but one example. Also all the IC Packaging pages were up-dated; The MEMS [MicroElectro-Mechanical Systems] had a new oscillator manufacturer added.

When required the pages received a new search bar, had hidden comments deleted, HTML code fixes and so on. Any how, other than posting what pages are changing this post serves a higher purpose, right. The posting serves to provide another external link to these pages which is always a good thing, perhaps insuring a page rank. It pings the search engine to check these pages as the engine reads these page....

The point is not to list all 25 pages that were updated today, but hit the highlights. Let viewers know what is going on and at the same time serve a dual function of working SEO issues ~ optimizing the pages for Search Engines, either on my web site or from this site.....

Oh, if you read this blog, Bandwidth is 60kB/visit, still growing after all my work to date?

CoffeeCup HTML Editor Review

Hmm, I'm trying the free version of the CoffeeCup HTML editor and I'm not sure I like it. The CoffeeCup Editor seems to be really slow ~ I don't like slow.

I was using the free version of 1st page 2000, and yes the program came out in 2000. You go with what works, or in my case what does the job and gets the job done fast. Any how I've gotten the blue screen about 4 times with my new computer, and each time it seemed like it was because of the 1st page html editor. Note, I said it appeared as if the html editor caused it..

Yes a newer version of the html code editor came out in 2006, but when you visit the site and read the forum you quickly find that 1st page 2006 is full of bugs and the site provides no support [not my words].

I'm not buying a new html program editor with out trying it out first, so I found CoffeeCup. This program looks a lot like the other program I was using, so that's good. Free is good, but the company does offer a paid version. Before I say what the issues are, I need to say that this is only the second day using the new program.

The program issues, or what I do not like about Coffeecup;
1: I can not move the last modified date [column] next to the file name [column]
2: The 'Name' column defaults to the CoffeeCup folder and does not remember "my" folder
3: The 'Name' column re-cycles to the start of folder any time I save a file, changing position
4: Any time I save a file, I get the hour glass ~ we're done.

Just for the record I only use an HTML editor to view text. The program displays commands or text in different colors, and or high-lights certain types of text. Other wise I could just use a text editor, as I use no advanced commands. Many times I will select some text and hit the 'bold' button, or 'center' button to correct the text view ~ so what, I could code that myself.

Here is the link to the PC I'm using;
http://serial-phy-interfaces.blogspot.com/

Checking Active Links

I just ran the robot spider to check all the links on my site. Things look pretty good, I had 5,985 links with only about a dozen bad links.

With a site like this one you always have to be sure the links are good and active. To many bad links and the search engines will penalize the site. So I deleted the bad links, and up-dated the pages as required.

Of course the site has hundreds of pages that do not have any external links at all ...

I did take the time to update a few pages, and I came across a few more pages that did not have a Google search bar:

Optical Transport Networks,
Gigabit Ethernet,
Ethernet in the First Mile.

All three pages are related to the Ethernet Bus. I also find that the Ethernet in the First Mile page has no page rank. Yet another page that has been out there for a year with no ranking. Granted it has no content, but give me a break here!

Any way, odds seem pretty good that no one finds a non-active link

No external Links

Other than my site map which is located out in Google page Creator, there are a number of internal pages with no external sites linking to them. I really see no difference between an external link or an internal link and I don't think the search engines care either, a link is a link.

However depending on a pages content, there are only so many pages that can cross link to similar content within my web site. So in that regard I am concerned about pages with few external links.

Here are some examples:
ATX Riser Cards.
Commercial Standard Communications Bus.
Intermediate Bus Architecture.
Interbus.
Microwire.
X-by-Wire.

There may be a few dozen other pages with only one link, but these are all bus related. Dealing with interface buses, which is what the site is geared to. I did note that many pages with few external links were new pages to the site. How ever the pages listed here are not new, they have been listed for months if not years.

The ATX Riser card only has one internal link as well.... So does the Apple RS232 bus.

Earnings from the Google Search Bar

Here is a chart showing the increase in earnings from people using the Google Search Bar. Although the search bar has always been on many pages, there were also a number of pages that have only received the search bar within the last few months.

The chart shows a 5x increase in earnings over the last several months. The bad news is that 5 times a low income is still a low income. I don't make that much from the search bar.

Previous posts provide charts showing the amount of traffic, or people using the search bar.

The new search bar I've been adding also defaults to search the web site, so that may help people stay on the site instead of being redirected to the web. Just today the search bar was added to eight pages that had not had search function before.

404 Document Not Found, HTML Code

Sometimes I'll see a number of 404 codes in my server stats and notice that there coming in from a particular forum or blog. Normally someone has just referenced my web site, but misspelled the page address, or just got the case wrong ~ I'm unix.

Any way when I see a large number of hits coming in to a page that does not exist, I'll generate a 'holding' page to redirect them to the correct address. Usually the surge in hits only lasts a few days until the link falls off the front page of the forum. But they keep coming as other addresses or if someone happens to find the link in a search. However I have not added one of those re-direct pages in a while, instead just relying on the 404 page to collect the visitor and hope they find their own way to the correct page.

The attached graphic shows page impression from Adsense. I generated my own unique 404 page back in Now. 2007, of course I placed ads on it. So the re-direct pages constantly get one or two page hits a-day, while the new 404 pages are now seeing 10 to 15 page views.

I use 'channels' in Adsense to break out different sections in the web site, in this case the channel is "bad page address". There are 126 pages in the 'bad address' channel, the 404 page, and 120 other misspelled web addresses...

Graph is date vs page impressions.

Search Bar Usage

Looks the more and more people are using the Google search bar. I still find pages that don't have the search bar, and it doesn't seem to be related to when the page was last up-dated. So even if I updated a page the middle of last year, I may not have added a search bar.

I last blogged about this just the 9th of last month, again I up-date the search bar if the page already has one.

Google supplemental index

Google hides what pages are in there supplemental index, but before they did I always had more than 100 pages in there supplemental index. It's really hard to find out which pages have been moved to the supplemental listing. A huge reduction in page rank is an indication, but loss of page reduction is evidence that a page has moved to the supplemental index.

Why, well any new page I make is a copy and paste of an existing page. If I don't up-date the Title, description, or page contents then the new page appears to be a copy of another page ~ no page rank ~ I check for duplicate content most time, but it depends on the up-date I'm making.

Web Pages Losing Page Rank

I'm still out checking some of these low producing pages. I've added comments to some of the previous posting, so you may need to click the title to see the added comment.

Any way I'm finding pages that were added to the site a year ago that are not showing a page rank. I know it could be a google issue, but I don't want to take that chance. A few examples of pages that appear to have lost their page rank [all from the How to Design an Equipment Chassis]:

Environmental Alarm Manufacturers,
Temperature Alarm Manufacturers,
Chassis/Card Slot Keying,

Why would the page rank revert back to a 'gray bar', err zero page rank?

Three Apple NuBus pages are also getting low page views, of course the bus has been obsolete for 10 years:
Update: 9-29-2011 the Nubus pages were all combined into one page.

Also XDR2 Memory Modules....

So once you get a page rank, you could lose it, but why?
The graphic shows that only 10 pages out of the 42 pages in the How to Design an Equipment Chassis get most of the traffic.

Tax Returns at no Cost

If you would like to get your taxes done at no cost and don't mind doing them your self on-line than the IRS has the answer for you.

Free tax preparation and electronic filing available for 97 million eligible taxpayers who earn $54,000 or less; Free File marks its sixth year. If your adjusted gross income [AGI] was $54,000 or less in 2007, you can use Free File to prepare and e-file your taxes online.

Free File will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through our network of partners, but it's important to remember that you must access Free File through the IRS website [irs.gov]. Get a faster refund, in as little as 10 days with Direct Deposit.

Free File applies to Federal taxes, while Fees for state tax returns may apply; however, some companies offer Free File state tax return preparation and e-filing.

Looks like there are 19 different e-file programs to chose from, including all the well known ones like H&R Block and TurboTax. It's just like using the paid version of the software, except it's free.

In 2006, the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be $48,201.00. The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) in the year 2006 was $26,036.

Web Site Promotion

This post follows up on the Dec 29 2007 posting on "Blogger Page Views". That posting showed a graph of page impressions for this blog.

This new graph provides the same data but extends out to Feb 6 2008. The large increase in page impressions provides an indication of how site promotion helps in getting visitors. In this case the increase in visits is due to posting the blog name out in Google news groups ~ Answering someones question and leaving the blog address as a signature.

Yes those are 'one time' hits, but some small percentage of people may come back for another look

Bandwidth vs Low Page Views

Yesterdays blog showed some site stats concerning low page views or page impressions, several hundred pages receiving less than 100 page views a month. So I wanted to list a few examples of what pages were performing so poorly.

I have a section within the web site that provides an alphabetic listing of manufacturers. Years ago it started out as just four very large web pages, but over the last few years have been divided up into 88 individual pages. The main landing page is Electronic Manufacturers, letter 'A', with links to all the other letters. So, for this section of pages, that landing page receives the most 'hits', 372 page views [last month]. The page views drop for all the other pages, as a visitor clicks on the desired letter to find the manufacturers their looking for. The next best performing page is 'D', at 49 page views. In fact only 15 of 88 pages saw more than 20 page views, the other 73 pages receive less than 20 page impressions. The section may not see much action, but people do find it useful as it indicates who may have acquired a company that no longer resides on the web.

Anyway there is another post from Nov 3 'Server Bandwidth' that also mentioned that same section of pages. The manufacturers section uses a page format with 'to many' graphics and the previous bandwidth post pointed that out. The server "Webalizer" report indicates the top 30 files that are taking up the highest bandwidth. Back in Nov. one of the files was the graphic on the top of the page. Now that the graphic was ported over to Google page creator [and other changes over the last few months] the report is now showing 5 of the smaller graphics in the top 30 files. It's time to port those pic files over to my page creator account so they drop off that server and not my web site server.

Recommend Generating pages to provide content

I've always recommended generating more pages on a site to provide more and more content, generating more visits. But maybe you need more than just pages.

My server counter truncates its report on page views after a few hundred pages, so I'll use Google Analytics here, page view data for Jan 2008.
2 pages received over 10,000 page views.
96 pages received between 1,000 to 9,999 views.
455 pages received between 100 to 999 views.
455 pages received between 20 to 99 views.
398 pages received less than 20 pages views.

While my normal advice is to produce new pages to generate more traffic or page views. The data indicates that a person could generate hundreds of new pages and still see little or no traffic. Almost 4oo pages received less than 20 page impression a month, that's a lot of work for only a few views. Granted 398 x 20 is still over 7,000 views, but that's only 200 views a day.

Normal page views for the site runs over 14,000/day. Given that it takes better than 4 months to get page rankings, from the time the page is created, and only so many pages a month can be generated; it could be several months before a new site sees any traffic at all.

Any one trying to make money may be put off by this, considering that you can only expect a few percent of the visitors to view an ad. 7000 views x 2% x ad value = not much. So if your thinking of starting a web site, do it now to get that page ranking in 5 months. But don't expect to make any money the first year.

Those new pages that are generated in month 3 will still need 5 additional months for a page ranking ~ that's 8 months after the site was created.

~ Those pages with a low page view still help to round out my site. And at only 20 views a month don't even get viewed most days......

Always provide good Page Content

Yesterday I posted to the 'what's new blog' a few new pages that are still waiting for a page rank. Well I'm looking at the stats today for the web site. Many of those new pages are getting zero visits, or a very low number of hits. Several pages only have 8 to 12 page hits, which I assume is mostly from me checking the new up-loads.

So what's the deal then, does page rank really determine how well a page does. I'm reviewing the stats for one of the new pages dealing with microSD connectors. Just since mid Jan. that page has already received 110 page views, in just three weeks. That's 10 times the number of visits received by most other new pages and in a quarter of the time.

Hmm, looking at the Navigation Summary I see that 46% of the page hits are direct [via a search Engine] and 31% of the page hits are coming in from the microSD pin out page. Checking Google for the search term "MicroSD connector manufacturers" I find that page is listed first out of 24,000 other pages. Not bad for a page that is only 3 weeks old. The attached graphic gives the search history for the term 'microSD', there was no history for the other words.

So the other new pages do not provide the required content to place high in the search results. They have internal links that also don't receive a lot of traffic. The new pages are more than several pages off the index page [hidden deep within the site]. The topics the pages cover must have a low yield, low search terms.

Best Month ever

Last month [ Jan 2008] the web site received its highest number of Unique Visits ever, 153,351 visits. The previous high was in March of the last year at 149,184.

The graph starts in Jan 2004 and runs to Jan 2008, but there have been many other charts up-loaded that show years down to 1998. The current graphic only shows the last few years to better illustrate the fluctuations. Just for the record, if you followed the news, two under water cables were cut in the Mediterranean shutting down internet access to a dozen countries yesterday ~ maybe I lost a few hits...

January seems to always be an 'up' month, yes it has 31 days, but it also has new-years in there?

Visits appear to have increased 3 or 400 per day, into the high 8000's, with page views centered around 14,500 a-day.
Additional stats for the month:
IE = 66%, Firefox = 28%
Dialup = 4%
Windows = 94%
Java support = 98%