TRAFFIC
General
Robots
Cyber - R
ZeusWork
Search
THEMESITES
Found
Categories
Spiral
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TRAFFIC
General
This article continues the information provided in previous articles WebSites
as well as WebLogic and expands in more detail
some of my experiences while putting together this site.
Robots
Previously I have provided information about robots in the context of
major search engines and the methods they use to gather information from
around the WWW and in particular your site and the way they use that
information to 'rate' sites and give others seeking information a method
of finding that information.
There is another side to robots one that may people don't know about and
that is that there is robot software available for use by small site
webmasters which enables them to emulate the large search engines in
seeking information which is likely to benefit small sites in raising
their popularity and exposure.
So what you say what do I want with a robot.
If you are looking for a way to make your site more visible and popular
you can gain these by in effect out smarting the search engines into
thinking your site has lots of links to and from other sites which in
turn are sending traffic to your site - in this way your site ends up
getting continuous 'hits' from those sites as well as being placed
higher and higher in its rating on the major search engine sites.
If you look at this site you will see that there is a 'links directory'
with lots of links in different themes from all around the WWW. In
effect there is a resource on this site which visitors can use to find
information about all kinds of different information related to
Architecture and of interest to Architects.
All these link sites send traffic to this site an visa versa - when
somebody looks at these sites and finds a link back to this site they
visit thus increasing the traffic to this site.
How does this help - the experts say that generally you need between 200
to 400 hits per sale. And the purpose of your site is after all to show
people who you are and what you do and also to get new work and
projects.
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Cyber-Robots
There are robots for just about every conceivable use available on the
WWW - if only you know what you are looking for and what you want them
to do for you. Robots to travel the WWW and find email addresses, to find
URL's which fit a category of information you are looking for, and the
list goes on.
The link directory on this site was extracted using a robot called ZEUS.
If you are interested in getting more people to visit your site
particularly those that are looking for information on Architects and Construction
related topics - this is the robot for you.
Not only will Zeus find similar URL's but he will also find email
addresses from those sites and store that information in a database
which will allow you to make use of it in what ever way you want to.
Zeus will automate links creation in all kinds of categories, send email, extract email
addresses and spy on opposition sites to see what they are up to and
what they are doing which is different to you. This is
particularly useful if you want to know why one site is getting more
hits and is more popular than yours.
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How Zeus Works
Before you can get any robot to do what you want you need to teach
the robot to find what you are looking for. You do this by training Zeus
with keywords aimed at what you are trying to find (architects, energy,
building, etc) and you give each of the keywords a ranking in there
order of importance so that Zeus can score the words that he finds on
each site he visits.
Next you pick a site which similar to the one that you are looking for
and you enter its URL into the teach window - set Zeus off to look at
the pages in the site and extract whatever information he can find.
Keywords, text, descriptions and the like - as he finds a word he does
not know he asked you to rank its importance in this way you build up
your database. Imagine what will happen as you let Zeus run overnight
looking at sites after you have trained him?
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Site Search
Zeus searches each site he comes across and extracts all links he finds
from that site to any other sites which are linked. Next he scores 10
pages on the site and 'feeds' of the links he finds to go from one site
to the next as he visits he stores more link information to other sites,
email addresses etc using this information to go to the next and the
next and the next site. Having extracted information from each page he
visits on each site he scores the site relative to keywords and when he
finishes he rates the site relative to the keywords to determine if it
matches your THEME - if it does he stores it in his database and them
moves to the next. If the site doesn't match he will discard it but keep
the link information so that he can visit those links to see if any of
them match your theme. And so he goes no his merry way
searching.......searching..... and searching each time you set him going
finding more and more sites. as he goes.
Not all the site he thinks match do in fact - and Zeus will need a bit
of fine tuning as you go on.
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THEME SITES
Sites Found
My experience has been that he can visit about 50 sites in an hour -
depending on the speed of your system. Sometimes out of that number
there are about 10 to 20 'theme' sites.
Categories
Having found the sites which are similar to the theme you are looking
for there is another part to the Zeus - he encourages you to visit
the sites he has found and to check if they fit your theme information -
if not you can delete that site and go to the next and so on.
If the site fits then you can place it into a theme category and build
up the categories to fit your requirements. Hopefully at the same time
Zeus finds your sites he finds and extracts email addresses (some sites
don't provide it some do). Having placed a site into a category and if
it has an email address then Zeus provide you with default email files
you can send informing the site webmaster that you have found his site
and request a link to that site at the same time explaining that you
have created a link directory and placed his site into theme within your
site.
As you continue in this way you build up your categories and your links
based on the theme you established.
Soon you get responses back from the email you sent confirming a link
from the sites you sent requests to and Zeus has default email to
respond and advise that you have placed that site into 'Link Partner'
category elevating it to the top of your theme directory. The great
thing about this is that you can link to your own site from your link
directory thus the next time a major search engine visits your site it
find that link and your site grows in importance getting elevated in
their listings.
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Spiral
Well you can guess what happens - the more reciprocal links you have the
more 'popular' your site becomes and the more 'hits' your site gets from
referrals from other sites. The link directory on this site was started
in February 2001 not long after the site was launched and as a
consequence the traffic has grown at the rate of about 100 to 200 hits a
week. From those hits we have received about 15 enquiries with about 3
prospects for new commissions coming out of the 15 - not a bad
percentage. I guess it is still early days and we are still to see what
growth in traffic there will be on a continuing basis.
One thing is for sure there has been increased traffic as a consequence
of using Zeus and the traffic is growing at a steady rate.
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Victor Z Yanchenko has been involved with
computer technology since 1969 specifically in the areas of evaluating
CAD based mainframe and PC based systems. In the early 1970's he
assisted in the development of APDesign a PC based third party
application specifically for use by Architects with AutoCAD the worlds
most widely used PC based AEC software. In the early 1990's, apart from
his Architectural responsibilities he designed, managed and maintained
several Web Sites including the Sarlos Yanchenko Collaborative Web
Site as well as undertaking implementation and integration of Internet
based remote Design and Documentation of various projects for
clients in locations such as Mongolia, Thailand, Malaysia as well as
other Asian and Oceania based projects.
This site was built using some of the knowledge and information in
this article.
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