Optimize Your Web

For those that are constantly reviewing site visitors with Google Analytics (or any web site analyzer), there are a few things you should realize about their measurements.

Avg. Time on Site.
-This is calculated when they first request a page, and then when they request another.  This is not a true indication of the time.  Say if a person wants to read one of your posts (say a really lengthy and informative post, and it fulfills their needs) it doesn’t say actually how long they sat there and read it.  So it counts it as 0 time on your site if they do not click something else on your site.

Bounce Rate:
Many people don’t go to a website to find specific information and while they’re using that information for their intended purpose, do they continue to search your site unless either A) they’re returning to find out what else you wrote or B) complete finished whatever task they needed to accomplish at your site, and was curious about more.

So in conclusion, these are not great indicators of how your site helps people unless you have 20 articles written about similar subjects.  Because there is not a way for them to see (unless the person clicks something after reading the article, which many don’t).  If anyone has a good alternative or way to determine these and other measurements better, please feel free to share with all of us.

For those of you who have read my Usenet article, I have a better solution for scouring groups instead of the previously mentioned website.  Try NZBMatrix.com.  I believe it’s a $10 lifetime “donation” which is well worth it.  The other site was like $2/month and now requires an invitation.  I like how quickly NZBMatrix.com’s site responds and the neatness of the entire thing. I have been trying it for the past week or two, and I must say it is very nice. Try it and let me know what you think.

Lately I have been reading Digg a lot. But I have noticed some abuse by some of the posters and really annoying “coincidences” with news. I am a little annoyed with the clicks that seem to be apparent with submitting news on Digg. Why am I annoyed? Because I feel that this does not allow others to share posts and have corrupted what the site’s original purpose. Here are some irregularities and suggestions on how to fix:

• People digg anything their friends shout to them or tell them to digg.
  • This ruins the purpose to digg something you actually think is worthy. I don’t have a problem with people digging their friends posts or shouts, but not strong.
  • Solution: Have algorithms that restrict the number of diggs you can digg a day. Maybe limit diggs when they are shouted, as in only allow 50 diggs even if someone shouts to 2000 friends.
• People digg everything so that people friend/fan them and allow them to shout at them. An example is seen in this post: showing 80 soome-odd digs in 3 minutes which may be from using the script described in this post: About a Digg Script.
  • Solution: Same as in the above post, and also limiting the number of stories someone can digg per day. Maybe restrict this to those that are their friends or however Digg sees fit.
• Stories seem to duplicate with slightly different titles. I have seen several posts recently about the “Rapping of the Atom Machine” or whatever everyone is calling it. This post continually hits the front page. It makes it so front page stories are continually recycled.
  • Have people monitor Digg. Easy as that. Have a moderator, or a few to look at stories, look at abuse from people, and take corrective action.
• The top “X” number of posters control the front page…. Why and how? Is it abuse or legitimate?
  • If you have algorithms in place and moderators in action to limit these, then people won’t have the ability to do abuse the system and get paid for it.  Another option is to make all articles Anonymous until it either hits the front page or is “x” hours/days old.

I assume with the Ads on the site that Digg and it’s creators are getting a good money stream. Why not pay someone to sit at home and monitor Digg? Is it because any story regardless it making Digg money? Well you will soon see a decline in users once they notice these problems.

I for one will continue to read Digg as long as people are noticing the same mistakes and abuse that I notice. A public outcry has already been seen as we can see here calling for the ban of what seems to be an abusive user.

I certainly hope Digg follow the suggestions of the many of users out there, and maybe take my ideas and others and turn Digg back into the Democracy that it was intended to be, otherwise your user base may just shrink while you ignore the public calling for justice.

Here is a table that I found recently about Google’s Page Ranking based on incoming links. I am not sure how accurate it is since Google keeps changing their algorithm, but it is a very interesting thing to note about how many links should be incoming in order to get a certain page rank. This doesn’t seem to factor in content or other things that are (or should be) heavily weighed in Google’s algorithm, but again it’s just very interesting.