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Problems In Searching
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Loading ...A while ago I started building a search engine for a demo website I have. Nothing to fancy or anything, but good enough to index pages and return results. I’ll post an article some time from now about how you can build a search indexer.
I’m pretty far along but have encountered some problems with indexing web pages. The first was that I somehow was not able to index sub pages successfully. As it turns out this had to do with the fact that my link extractor made a mistake. It included quotes as part of the Url.
The second problem I encountered was that the indexer crawled the same page multiple times in one refresh. First time when they were fetched from the existing index and then once every time another page linked to it. To solve this I added a list of pages already visited, which actually worked 
.
The last problem, which so far I haven’t solved, is that the indexer seems to be unable to find new pages. This happens when the index reaches a fixed size. I have no idea why at this point. But it may have something to do with a bug in the crawler.
So hopefully I will have all of these problems fixed before my next article on how to build a search indexer.
What’s up with Gmail lately
I don’t know if it is bad luck, a rainy day or something else but whenever I visit Gmail my Firefox crashes. Which is really strange since I’ve never had this problem before. Is it the latest update of firefox, or perhaps an update to gmail. I don’t know, but I don’t like it.
The opening of the website is going alright, but as soon as I start navigating through my mail Firefox disapears. When I restart firefox it just asks me if I would like to continue my previous session. (Not really:()
The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t read any e-mail for the time being using firefox, well unless I wan’t to watch a crashing browser of course . If any one of you know how to solve the problem please let me know!
Using Google Analytics When making decisions
I’ve been using Google Analytics for about a year now. And up to know I haven’t done much with it. It collects data and I look to see if the visitor count is increasing, though truth be told I’d love it to stay steady .
Last week I decided that I was going to try and use Google Analytics to help me decide what to do with this blog. You may ask why, but I’m hoping it can help me provide you with better information and me with a better website.
How can analytics help
To be honest I didn’t know where to start so I decided to look at some of the features of analytics. These are the ones I’m hoping will help me:
- Capability to track users through the website (sort of)
- Track statistics on users, like location / operating system / browser / etc..
- Track page statistics, like how often pages get visited and how long
- Where people came from
- Give differential reports
Lets walk through how you can use them to improve the website, starting with the first 
.
Capability to track users through the website
Why is it useful to track users visiting your website. Easy, if you find that your visitors don’t visit a page then you may be able to figure out why. For example can’t they find the link, is it to deep in the website. This kind of information can help refine the navigation through the website.
With analytics you won’t be able to track individual visitors, but you can see the general flow through the website. So if you changed the navigation and visitors suddenly can’t get to a page you have a good idea as to why.
Track user statistics
I hope it’s clear why this helps refine a website. Just knowing where your visitors come from helps you target content. Or blog posts in my case. Just like knowing the browsers they use and the average connection speed helps you refine the implementation of the website.
Analytics offers a very thorough overview of the visitors system. From operating system (eg: windows) to JavaScript support.
Track page statistics
One of the features I particularly like is the capability to track which pages are most viewed. This helps me refine what people are looking for and what type of text and images they like best.
But it also helps with something else. You can roughly determine how long it takes before a page on your website becomes popular. As well as how long it takes for search engines to send some real traffic to it.
Where people are coming from
With this I do not mean the location like ‘US’ or ‘United Kingdom’, but the referrer of the visit. This helps me to determine in which areas my website is currently good. For example right now most of my traffic comes from Google. I prefer that most of my traffic comes from other websites though.
So this tells me I should improve my content to get more links from related websites. As well as improve my lay-out so other website owners are more likely to link to my website.
Give differential reports
And last but not least the differential reports. A differential report is when you compare the current month against the data from the last month. You can have these e-mailed to you, which I like.
You can set these up by going to any page in Google Analytics and then clicking the date in the upper right corner to set a timeframe. You can also set the ‘Compare against previous’ option. This will give you a differential report. (Sorry I can’t give any screenshots, since I’m using the Dutch variant of analytics)
You can then see how you have improved or worsened over the past month.
Refining a Website based on Visitor Statistics
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Most webmasters or website owners fill their website with content they believe the visitor will like. After all you want them to come back for a second time. But how can you make sure that the content you make is attracting visitors and inspiring them to come back.
Well there are a few ways to find out what the people visiting your site are interested in. When you have this information you can start refining the content on your website. If you for instance wrote something about a Ferrari. And you get a lot of visitor searching for ferrari tires, you may want to add some content about that.
Finding the needed information
Lets first go into where you can find the information you will need to refine your website. No matter how, you will always end up trying to pursue your visitors to give more information then they might like.
One way of doing this is by using polls or questionairs. This is a very useful tool, but with one major drawback. If you don’t already have a steady visitor base it won’t work. How often have you entered a website and clicked away an anyoing popup asking you to answer some questions. Most new visitors don’t like questionairs.
A second way is by tracking every move a visitor makes on your website. This will provide information on how they navigate through the site. Which in turn indicates which information they find highly relevant. Big downside is that it requires a lot of disk space. Even worse you have to make some type of mention of this in the privacy policy. Last drawback is that it doesn’t provide information on what the visitor was looking for when he came to your website.
The third and far better way, at least I think so, is to log how the visitor came to the website. Some questions could be:
- For instance did he originate from a search engine. If so what keywords did he search with. What could he be looking for.
- Was the visit from my own website. If so did he use a search feature and what keywords. If not what related page did he come from.
- Was the visit from an external website. What is the content of that page. How does it appeal to the visitor.
This logging can be done quite easily as all the information is stored in the HEAD information sent by the visitors web-browser. (Please note that you can’t fully rellie on this as it can be manipulated). Various other tricks are available as well to get this information, but more on that in a follow up article about data mining.
Using the information to refine the content
Now that you have the information you still need to put it to good use. So lets asume that your website is about cars. And it has a section on Ferrari. You have a lot of content on the various cars. But you don’t have information on the various parts of the cars.
Now in your data-mining (the steps described above ) you find out that a lot of visitors come to your site through search engines. But they are looking for tyres that are for the Ferrari 250GT. Initially when creating the website you never thought this might be useful information.
After making this discovery you could decide to add new content to the pages of the various cars with details about the tyres. How they perform and which are best for which models. By doing so you appeal to your visitors as they now find information they are interested in.
A second type of discovery you may encounter is that your website structure (including navigation) may be wrong. For example people looking for the tyre information never found the content on the website. But it does exists. This may mean they just can’t find any navigation to it. Keep in mind that most visitors only spend a few seconds looking for ‘useful’ information before moving along.
So make sure your information is easy accessible!!!!!
Now that you now some basics of refining your website you can start. But start with some small things first, just to try it out.
Importance of Consistancy
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 6) Loading ...When visiting a website of a company, wether corporate or commercial, you may sometimes have had the feeling that something just isn’t right. Can’t quite put your finger on it, but you do notice it. Well in many cases this has to do with the text of the website (sometimes graphics as well, but not in this article ).
So what is it you noticed. Is the text wrong. Does it not appeal to you. Or do you simply don’t like what they say. Maybe even all of the above. It really doesn’t matter since any would drive you away from the website. What does matter is why did it feel off.
Discovery of the problem
In most cases you will have found one simple problem. The creator of the website forgot to keep his audience in mind when writing all of the text. Or maybe he didn’t even consider you part of his audience (bad him ). But what does this mean to conversions of that website. Well for one you will be unlikely to buy anything because you probably don’t trust it completely.
Knowing that text could cause problems with your targetted audience what is it that makes the text on a website right. Well the following list could make a text unattractive for your readers.
- Wrongly using complicated words,
Using difficult words may be hot in your niche, but it won’t attract the John Doe from the street. Most of them don’t even understand what they are reading. Something that won’t help you selling products to them. Always keep your audience in mind when writing texts. - Using he, she, you incorrectly,
This is especially important in other languages then English. If you look at German for example they have ‘Sie’ or ‘du’ which both means you in English. But one is polite and the other isn’t. Make sure you know which your audience prefers and stick with it. Don’t do half with ‘Sie’ and the other have with ‘du’. - Missing call to action,
One of the most common mistakes is that the text doesn’t tell your visitors to actually do something. If you want them to buy something don’t stop at how good it is. Also inform them of how to buy it (and don’t use ‘Buy now’, thats just wrong in so many levels). - Annoying calls to action,
On the other end of the scope is a to agressive call to action. This will rub your visitors the wrong way. Making them anger or dislike you. Both not good things if you still want them to buy.
Solving the problem
If you know the problem then you can solve it. Right…..
Well not necessarily. The problem may be a bit more complicated. You may not know your audience well enough. Prehaps your audience has changed over time. So make sure to keep updating your information about the visitors of your website.
If you have something to say about this article, don’t hesitate to comment….
