For several years, we have suggested to search engines and search engine service providers that they should consider HTML validation of pages that are submitted. One such service introduced today, takes on that challenge.

PositionTech (an Inktomi Submission Partner) has introduced a new utility to validate submitted pages. Jim Stob of Position Tech said that, we won't require validation of course, but it is one thing users can check their submitted pages with. The validator is available to Positiontech customers.

This addresses one of the most common causes of search engine disasters - HTML errors. What we see in a browser is not necessarily what is seen by search engines when they index a page. How search engines adapt and handle common HTML errors that browsers can work around, is completely unknown.

The service introduced by PostionTech is an online beta version of the acclaimed CSE by HTMLValidator.com.

Validation has recently been brought to the forefront of development discussions due to the rumored switch of AOL from internet Explorer to Netscape 6. By validating pages, developers can be assured that their pages are not only valid for search engine indexing, but also for various browsers too.

PositionTechs move is a step in the right direction for the entire internet. We certainly hope other search services or search engines themselves will follow PositionTechs lead.

Related:

• PositionTech: http://www.positiontech.com/
  
• CSE HTML Validator: http://www.htmlvalidator.com/
  

Discussions:

• Common Validator Errors
  
• W3C Validation - always out of reach
  
• HTML Validators Run down
  
• Browsers/HTML Forum
  
• SearchEngineWorld W3C Validator
  

i guess a few teething troubles, a good idea though

well done PT
I completely agree with you Brett that this is a very constructive step in the right direction. (The problem is though that the server is not responding when I try to access the validation tool) I suppose the bug will be fixed shortly.
The only thing I've been happy about so far with this tool, is that I find that I'm not alone in having it not work for me! ;)

Regardless, it is, IMHO, a huge step in the right direction. I'm curious to see what it actually validates to though in terms of HTML version, document type, etc.

Should be fun to take a look around though, and find those many pages that *seemed* to be well constructed!

Cheers,
~ Eric
Jim said they just put it up yesterday. This is it's first debut. It's CSE - they'll get it right. For those that don't have a copy of CSE, it will be a really good experience. CSE is excellent stuff (I know, I know - it's pricey, but you know I don't go around recommending too much commercial software - ever. This and Opera are about it).
I have enjoyed CSE, with very favorable results. There's something about a small HTML document, that is formatted properly for all browsers - that is simply tough to beat.

Knowing how the application works offline though, there are a number of options that I would like to see (if they make it) online as well through PositionTech. (Options that come to mind would include the new syntax features of v. 5.03, spell checking, and the ability to batch process a number of documents.)

Again, it is irregardless. This is a step in the right direction, and one that I love hearing more about.
this is a great tool...it helps us see our errors...

but i am wondering if the spiders rank us accordingly (i mean depending on the errors)???

;)
Brett,

The CSE desktop validator is amazing! Wow! Thanks for pointing this one out.
Am I the only one who can't find the Positiontech validator?
there is a bright yellow H beside pages when you log into your positiontech account. Just click on that and off it goes.

It took me awhile to find it.
If you have Homesite, you can integrate the CSE validator and replace Homesite's native validator. That makes for very a nice workflow.
It is using ColdFusion which seems to prevent it from working on any ColdFusion websites (all of mine). This is a pretty obvious and serious problem. hard to believe they went live with it with such a glaring bug!
You can't find the bugs unless you beta test it.
dvb_99, the question is not so much how the search engines will rank you but if they will be able to read your HTML-code at all. If you have syntax errors in your documents there is no way to know how any given spider will understand that - or if it will simple skip it.
Well it worked for me on two documents, then it stopped working. It started giving me cold fusion errors, since all my stuff is on a cold fusion server. :(
It worked just fine on one of our client's cold fusion sites.

Why would it not work specifically on a CF site? The validator doesn't care about the server...it's simply parsing the end result HTML.
I sent them a quick email, and here is what they wrote back:
The syntax checker will work for any URL that does not redirect or
require a cookie. Your CF pages should not be a problem. This
application is in beta, we are monitoring it and making modifications as
needed. We do expect it will be stabilized shortly.

My pages do not require a cookie or redirect. I still got the CF errors though. Hope they fix it soon, I like this new feature. :)
In this general context it may be worth noting that the small and fast iCab browser for Mac ( http://www.icab.de ), still under development, has a smile/frown icon in the browser window that shows whether the page you are viewing uses valid HTML or not. If you click the icon it gives you an HTML error report on the page. It doesn't check XHTML yet, but does a good job with HTML4.

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Today, another security hole was mentioned on German online news magazines. So this is probably the 10th security issue in two months. I don't use Windows much so virtually every time I boot into Windows and want run WindowsUpdate, I will have to install yet another security fix.

If the Internet Explorer was anything but software (and installed by default and being almost impossible to remove) everyone would file law suits and demand a saver product. Why/How can Microsoft deliver such a piece of cr*p?

Here are some of the headlines (from German online news magazines) from the last two months. And this is without the Messenger, Outlook, Office and general Windows security holes:

Golem Network News -- 05.04.2002, 09:55 
Sicherheitsloch im CSS-Interpreter vom Internet Explorer  
http://golem.de/0204/19170.html  
heise online -- 29.03.2002, 14:58 
Sicherheitspatch fr den Internet Explorer  
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jo-29.03.02-000/  
Golem Network News -- 11.03.2002, 10:24 
Sicherheitsloch im Windows Explorer  
http://golem.de/0203/18696.html  
Golem Network News -- 05.03.2002, 10:17 
Sicherheitslcke in Microsofts Java-Machine  
http://golem.de/0203/18613.html  
heise online -- 04.03.2002, 16:26 
Internet Explorer fhrt lokale Dateien aus  
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/pab-04.03.02-001/  
heise online -- 22.02.2002, 13:03 
Neue Sicherheits-Patches von Microsoft  
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/pab-22.02.02-000/  
Golem Network News -- 22.02.2002, 11:11 
Drei neue Sicherheitslcken in Microsoft-Produkten entdeckt  
http://golem.de/0202/18433.html  
heise online -- 12.02.2002, 15:49 
Internet Explorer: Neue Patches, neue Lcken  
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/pab-12.02.02-000/  

And don't tell me you are using some personal firewall. It's nothing but an illusion of security and will provide hardly any real security if you allow your browser to pass traffic through it.
The number of holes, exploits, virues, and privacy problems that IE has experiences is overwhelming.

How could Microsoft allow this to happen?

We are not talking about the little programming shop on the corner. This is a multinational, established, brand leader in it's industry. How could Microsoft put out such apparently shoddy programming?

I think in order to understand it, we have to look at the Microsoft culture. For two plus decades, Microsoft has been writing for microcomputers. 95% of that time, Microsoft programers have had to concern themselves with one man - one machine.

There were no considerations needed for logins, security, or multi-user environments. It wasn't even until the late 80's that MS put out a solid networking system. Even that networking was for a closed loop environment where the biggest concern was file sharing - not security.

During MS's massive growth during the 80's, who did they hire? They hired green horn, fresh off the farm college boys in Bill Gates' image. Most of whom grew up on one user - one machine computing. They were the high school kids that toyed with the first commodores, apple 2's and ataris.

That culture instilled itself as much as cement in the cornerstones of the building. Many of those programmers entire life experience with computers could be spelled with two letters: pc. Not only did they hire guys fresh out of college that had done nothing but pc programming, they were the same guys that taught the new guys.

Desktop security in that environment was defined by the latest screen saver or keyboard lock utility - all hail SideKick!. They didn't have the training in multiuser, networked environments. It wasn't their game.

Suddenly, in the mid-90's, after years of single user programming, Microsoft found themselves a day late to the internet party without an invitation. When MS did sit down to begin work on internet software, they went to the same guys who'd been programming for one user - one machine for two decades.

That scramble turned panic when Gates called all hands to battle stations in 97. As they went to work in earnest on internet software, they did so in the rushed, hurried, gotta have it yesterday environment. We'll fix it in the upgrade became the battle cry.

That code that was produced out of the one user - one machine Microsoftie culture of the 80's, still lives on in many of MS's products today. We see error after error, virus after virus today because the work never went into the core in the first place.

That's no consolation for those of us that would like to use their products, but it does put a back drop on all the problems we continue to see with MS internet software. I just hope they get the worst of them found and fixed before something worse net wide happens.

I still think the OS itself is sound (98se is the best OS I've ever used), but until there is a track record of security, I am going to continue to use all the alternatives to Microsoft products available.
Offices use IE alot because MS have made it so easy for all that software to integrate with each other which means you can get alot more out of you software. Also, web based application generally can do more if designed primary for IE because it has more advanced handling and functionality.

home users also use it alot because they will buy a PC with Windows and as such they will install IE. Most home users will surf with what they've got rather than going to the troble of downloading and installing new software.

I'd like to stress at this point I use MS even though I'm not keen on it.
yet again i hear the anti-microsoft brigade on the march ...

do these people shout and holler about netscape? how could netscape release netscrap 4.x, a browser that simply didn't work. why did it take them so long to release 6.x? why did they release 6.0, another browser that simply didn't work properly, was a pain to install, repeatedly crashed and still didn't display sites properly? how could such a large corporation neglect loyal users for so long?

and what about the other alternatives? what about Opera? why on earth did they release a browser that had barely any support for javascript? what sort of following do they expect when their browser simply won't display a large number of websites with DHTML?

the bottom line is that no browser is perfect, but they are all free. at least IE works, which is a lot more than can be said for the alleged competitor browsers.

so, is anyone actually using IE? yes, about 95% of my site visitors use IE.

i expect that if netscrap and other browsers were as popular as IE, hackers would find just as many security holes in them as they manage to find in IE. the thing is, there is no point hunting for security holes in netscrap or opera because usage is so low.
Crazy Fool said it all.

Netscape = 3%
IE = 95.4%
Rest = 1.6%

P.S. You left out the fact that the new Netscape English download is actually foreign and the other downloads don't download the actual browser. Painful.
there's one hell of a lot i've left out ... alas, there are only 24 hours in a day and it'll take all of them and more to rant about the problems with the various non IE browsers ...
From a 100% numbskull, technically inept basis, (ie. me!!) I wish everyone in the entire world would use Internet Explorer.

Everthing works first time (unless I have fouled up), I can use CSS, DHTML and Java without having sleepless nights.

Still doesn't excuse the holes and seeming lack of attention to detail, but even so...
Alas, I'm not the only fan of Internet Explorer.

Crazy_fool I have to echo everything you've said - you're clearly not a crazy fool.

Is anybody using IE? I wouldn't give a XXXX for anything else... and I've tried them all.
What I'd like to know is are the problems with IE laziness on the part of the programmers or are they legitimate bugs (lets face it 99% of software has some bug or other) that HaCkeRz have exploited?
I have seen a steep rise in Netscape 6 clients in my logs lately, and have started using it as my main browser as well. Its more standards compliant and parses faster.

In time i think quality will win, and since AOL is said to be switching from IE to Netscape and the Gecko engine (it was bound to happen after they bough NS a few years back), we are all going to have to take NS 6 very seriously very soon.

Also, standards are becoming more important with portable devices hitting us bigtime in the future, so less i should think that designing for IE (meaning non-standard) will soon take a back seat.
I think there are two things that contribute to all the bugs in IE:

1) It is probably written in C , a language that encourages security flaws through buffer overruns. Some other languages don't have that problem.

2) IE is a horrendously complex piece of code. It not only does HTML rendering, but also does javascript, java, activeX, etc, etc. As the number of lines in a program increases, the number of bugs goes up exponentially (to what power can be argued).
We'll fix it in the upgrade became the battle cry.

That could be said of Netscape as well.
http://www.mozillaquest.com/News01/Netscape_6-2_released_Story01.html

As for the browser wars, right now it's not a war. All the MS bashing isn't suprising. Reminds me of Monty Python's bit in Life Of Brian. What have the Romans ever done for us? Apart from the aquaduct, sewer system, roads, law enforcement...

Netscape has plenty of bugs, NS users are hesitant to mention them. As for the proliferation of malware targeted at MS browsers, why would anyone bother writing code targeted at NS users? Malware writers want recognition so they target the largest market.

As for AOL, adopting the Gecko engine may or may not occur, but if AOL changes the way their browser looks too much they risk confusing the user and that is a well documented no-no. Does anyone consider AOL FORCING Netscape on its users a success for NS? Seems like Micro$oft took quite a bit of heat for forcing their browser on us poor unsuspecting surfers.

Competition is a good thing though, the end user benefits. Until Microsoft is dethroned, they will remain the target of choice, however misguided the attackers are. :)

DG
Personally, I have found IE6 to be by far the most stable and best performing browser of all. I regularly use all three major browsers (IE, Netscape and Opera) and still prefer IE6.

Netscape 6.0 was a major problem for me because it was so buggy and so obviously not ready for release. It was horrible and I was soured on their product for a long time after it. I've started using it again now and then because I like having alternatives, and I've found the newer release has fixed most of the problems.

Opera is a nice browser and I actually paid for the PRO version (don't like adware). I've started using it more and more, just because I don't like MS's decision to dump Java.

I do hope that AOL goes ahead with it's plans to replace IE, simply because I would like to see more competition in this area.

Richard Lowe

(edited by: rcjordan at 3:09 pm (utc) on April 5, 2002)
> Netscape 6.0 was a major problem for me because it was so buggy and so obviously not ready for release.

I think you hit the nail on the head there Richard. The release of Netscape 6 has left people with lots of negative feeling/experiences - a bit of a blunder really.

In defence of the Mozilla browser project the version I'm using now - 0.9.9 - nearly a year on from when Netscape 6 was released - is very stable, is not buggy and IMO conforms to the standards better than IE6.

I've not kept track of the security incidents with Mozilla - maybe I'll start to ... I can't help but feel that open source code where people have the chance to inspect and fix security problems for something that has become as integral to computer use as a web browser cannot help but be a good thing. Sure, holes may be found more easily by being open source - but the patches will be released 1000 times quicker than with closed source software.
expect that if netscrap and other browsers were as popular as IE, hackers would find just as many security holes in them as they manage to find in IE. the thing is, there is no point hunting for security holes in netscrap or opera because usage is so low.

Exactly my thoughts. It would be theoretically impossible to test a product for everything that it is capable of doing, especially an internet product. Look at how rapidly people/spammers/hackers adapt and refine their tactics.

It's basically a result of the culture - build something as fast as you can and release a patch to fix the problems that are going to show up a month later. Instead of having tests, just release it and you'll have a testing ground for free. If people stopped paying for the laterst release, and made a ruckus about companies not putting out quality product, there might be some changes. As it is now, there is no downside to releasing a buggy product. Look at all the Microsoft bugs, and has their marketshare fallen? No, in fact it has risen...

That being said, I'm not a MS basher. In fact, pretty much all my software (minus web development) is MS. IE 6 works perfectly for me, and is as standards compliant as it gets (to my knowledge). The only standards issue in previous (5.x) versions was the CSS box model, and who wouldn't get that wrong? Let's see, I specify my box to be 300px, then I add 25px margin on the inside of the box, suddenly the box is 350px wide? The W3C were the ones who screwed that up!

Software companies are rewarded for sloppiness. Look at SimGolf (addicting!) - already has two patches out which fix two pages worth of items. CivIII had at least two patches, fixing probably 10 pages worth of items. Apache has patches, and even Linux has security holes.
Did you ever wonder if some of the hackers are Netscape or other browser programmers just out to give MS a bad name.
Any windows user that really, genuinely thinks it's a sound and competent OS is either woefully (but probably happilly :-) unaware of the gaping wholes in the whole thing or just plain bloody minded.

I used Win for years and after toying with mac and finaly settling on linux I count myself lucky to be aware of the choice.

And that, in a nutshell is explains IE popularity, just becuase win users can choose doesn't mean they do. Check the logs, how many ie5.0's are there? Loads right... Most of the masses niether know nor care that they might even upgrade let alone change!

I don't hate microsoft. I applaud there beutiful, blatant and downright crafty and clever approach.

I just wish that the general public wern't so embarrasingly stupid.
not bad. i spent 15 minutes writing an articel for this thread, then i clicked submit and i got the following fields are empty: password when going back, my article dissapeared.
Probably a bug in IE :-)
sorry about your post, bitch when that happens huh?
>>Any windows user that really, genuinely thinks it's a
>>sound and competent OS is either woefully (but probably
>>happilly :-) unaware of the gaping wholes in the whole
>>thing or just plain bloody minded.

or maybe we're just not paranoid.
I use IE and why wouldn't I. Big deal if there are security issues. I hit windows update and in a minute or two they are fixed.
I just checked our website logs and 87% of our visitors are using some version of IE. I'd say LOTS of people are using it...
Does the fact that these browsers are free to download release the companies who produce them from responsibility for their security weaknesses and crappy performance? I don't know; maybe?

Their opinion has to be, so what if the webmasters, users and competition look down on us for creating a bad product. They're not paying for it. And as was mentioned above, Why should we pay for testing. Let the hackers test it; we'll fix it in the update.
Actually, Windows 2000 Pro and XP are finally excellent desktop operating systems. We run thousands of them at our company and the failure rate is exceptionally low. In addition, IE has proved to be a superior product for our users.

We performed testing on Linux, Unix and the Mac OS (I think the mac was OS7.5 at the time). Windows NT 4.0 and later 2000 was by far preferred by the users, was by far more stable, and had by far more products available. That actually was the main problem with the other operating systems - much less software was available.

As far as security and such are concerned, we use automated tools to keep the software up-to-date on all of the desktops.

Our systems are stable partially because they are totally locked down. We found that users who install their own products have many orders of magnitude more problems with the OS than those who don't. So when we rolled out new systems at Y2K we locked them down and the problems almost went away. The statistics changed by the same order of magnitude regardless of the OS.

I hear lots of complaining about windows, but in my experience when competently managed 2000 and XP are very good indeed. And that's the result of hard experience.
Did you ever wonder if some of the hackers are Netscape or other browser programmers just out to give MS a bad name.

Marshall, I think you've touched on a good point; after all, the king of the hill is the one to attack, and that is the attraction. It has (often) been argued that if other OS'es or browsers, enjoyed MS's popularity, they too would be subjected to similar attacks.

Never underestimate the resourcefulness of someone determined to wreak havok with the sole motivation of trying to beat the devil. In this case, the devil is whoever's on top....
I've said it before and I'll say it again, there isnt two days that we dont see the Microsoft name somewhere in the press. That is their goal - make holes, do bugs, cause problems but stay in the media. They are already past the point where people just wont use them. Now its 'Easy enough to update'

:) come on, who cares of Hotmail is down for a few minutes - they got a full page advertisement on news.com maybe some new people will sign up for the passport/hotmail service now.
Yeah, you've gotta hand it to 'em.

I think eventually someone will make a simpler 'restricted' Linux distribution that with the right backing could floor MS Win in 10yrs but untill then they reign supreme....
hahah just like how they are running the anti-unix campaign you dont think there goal was for someone to notice it was BSD run - then the server breaks? and now its on Windows its all settled and fixed?

All that led to so much news on them.
There's is old axiom in theater - bad reviews are better than no reviews. Guess the business equivalent can be - bad publicity is better than no publicity.
> the king of the hill is the one to attack

I'd say the principle is a bit more malevolent that. For those bent on destruction, any place of concentrated resources is the spot to attack.

This is why genetic diversity is important to species survival, why terrorists look to transportation hubs for their mayhem, and why the Internet itself was created.

Microsoft is not a physical concentration of assets, but their near-monopolies in browsers and other business related software means their success has created a cyber-vulnerability of great magnitude. No matter how poor or good Microsoft's products may be, diversity is essential for our cyber-health in a world where not everyone has good intentions.

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PR

I was wondering how long it would take them to do that. My guess is they'll duke it out for a few months and then settle out of court with a deal that merges the two companies.

Look for them to relaunch under the name Gooverture by 2003.
Interesting one to watch.

WG - surely 'Ovoogle' has a better ring to it.
OooOooo come on the company cant compete ? Arnt there a million other companies?
Isn't Overture still locked up in a suit with Findwhat over the validity of that patent?

Could end up being WhatGoogleOver...

DG
I believe you are correct Digitalghost in that they are still involved in the case with FindWhat.

I'll see if I can find out where that stands.
Another article on it:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-876861.html
Seems like they would have waited until this was decided:

http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article/0,,12_960971,00.html

Yeesh, my pager has scrolled the NASDAQ report about this story 15 times in 15 minutes. :)

DG
FindGoogle (results within) OvertureWhat?
In other stupid patents...Amazon patents Christmas. :)
I don't get it... Google doesn't sell placements in search results, the results themselves are totally unpaid for. Google does sell ads linked to search terms, but so does almost every major search engine. I wonder if Google would be being sued if they used ad banners instead of text ads.
Can we take the OVER, FWHT and GIPO name ideas to FOO please.

Thank you and have a nice day.
What are they saying? Some please explain this law suit to me.

Overture says that Google used something that they already produced and patented. What did they patent?

How do they know Google is using it? Did they break into Google's system. I just don't understand.

Thanks
PATENT

A system and method for enabling information providers using a computer network such as the internet to influence a position for a search listing within a search result list generated by an Internet search engine. The system and method of the present invention provides a database having accounts for the network information providers. Each account contains contact and billing information for a network information provider. In addition, each account contains at least one search listing having at least three components: a description, a search term comprising one or more keywords, and a bid amount.
>The lawsuit charges Google with infringement of Overture's U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361....

Time for us all to see how Google plays the game in the big corporate league.

The merits of the case will be revealed - but good to see a bit of a fight going on. I (for one) am a bit tired of the 'Google is the Ultimate' threads that go on and on and on and on and...

IMHO Google Adwords PPC is an entirely different mechanism to Overture - but I think it is refreshing to see someone standing up for what they believe against an SE that is gaining more control than is healthy for an open market.

As always - this is totally my personal opinion - which I respectfully expect to be shot down in flames. :)
but I think it is refreshing to see someone standing up for what they believe against an SE

No flames here. :) I would second that if I thought they felt they were actually being infringed upon. I see the litigious nature of our society in a suspect light though and I think this is an attempt to unfairly claim some of the market.

Society likes winners but seems to hate successful companies. The fear and loathing seems to be directly proportional to the level of success.

The litmus test of success in America isn't the profit margin, it is how many other companies would like to sue. Google attained their success by providing more relevant results quicker than any other SE in the industry, and now that success is already being seen as unhealthy. Makes it tough to play the game if people are only happy when you lose...

DG
Thanks Mike.

In other words this holds no weight. Just a PR stunt.
But do you guys see where this is going?
<rant>
The Internet is supposed to be free and give even the little guys (us) a level playing field. But could you imagine everytime you wanted to start a website and offer a superior service getting slapped with a lawsuit by some huge company? Google can fight a lawsuit like this, but can you?

Patents are useful, but it seems like these days, they are being used to stifle competition and innovation.
</rant>
Agreed, this is the kind of stuff companies thrive on - their technology. Sure its cool and all we get to list our sites on google with what we could do on overture for cheaper but thats the point.

ps - i still have 50.00 in my overture account couz they wont let me list any keywords for my pages - all rejected for some reason or another.
>I see the litigious nature of our society in a suspect light though..

Having lived in the US for more than 10 years, I agree with this sentiment totally. I was put out of business once by being sued by a huge multi-national on a case which probably had no merit (but I would say that) - but where I could not afford a proper defence. However this is not a 'David and Goliath' situation. Two pretty large players in the SE realm are set to 'duke
it out'. Rather than condemn it as a publicity stunt (which it may well be) - I see it as two completely different (and previously opposite) advocates of what constitutes a search engine heading up for an interesting battle - a traditional (Google) SE crossing into a completely commercial (Overture) SE's territory.

This could be an interesting and revealing contest. It could also have big ramifications on the recently announced LookSmart switch to PPC ;)

>The Internet is supposed to be free...

It still is for most sites who are not selling something. For those that are commercial sites - well, the little guy can still win by employing a good SEO - most of the big guys haven't got 'round to it yet :)
I view it as a mixture of publicity and panic. Panic because of the march Google has started into Goverture territory.

To all intents and purposes Goverture seems to be claiming any PPC technology is a breach. Absolute rubbish.

Yes, timing is everything. Interesting that their suit against Findwhat was launched at the point at which Findwhat looked like it might emerge as a serious competitor.

Also interesting that this suit appears when Google starts to really hurt them.

The sad fact is that legal action is all too often the refuge of a scoundrel.
I'm holding off judgement on this thing until I see more details of the suit. On one hand, I can see Overture did get a patent on the bidding for placement. Whether that patent will hold up in court is yet to be seen with the FindWhat suit itself.

On the other hand, Googles system is enough different that I wonder if the patent is applicable in this case. Google has that CPM minimum and autoadjustment in their system where Overtures doesn't. In a sense, Googles isn't bidding for placement. Additionally, Overtures displays the bid amount to the public, Googles does not. I don't know if that is enough different to matter, but there are enough of those differences, that I think they will certainly be brought up as part of the case.

The Street
Well BT should sue them both for using Hyperlinks. Certain things should not be allowed to be patented. Like well... Amazon's one click! Talk about patent crazy. Next thing you know someone will patent the compression on a image. Oh wait, that already happened. Sheesh.
Patents these days are out of hand...

You find the cure for cancer, you deserve a patent.

You shouldn't be able to patent the idea for a cure for cancer.
I agree with Brett about Google's PPC model being different. Not only do they consider cost, but they also look at click-thru as well...which is something that Overture doesn't take into consideration. Overture it out for who can pay the most on a CPC basis whereas Google looks for relevance (and yes, cost to some extent).

Personally, what are they squaking over...they're schleping their sub-par results to Yahoo/AOL/MSN...
Agreed, this stuff is frivolous litigation. Patents are supposed to be non-obvious aren't they?

The US govt needs to put a stop to this trend and beef up the resources allocated to evaluation of these patents. Priceline, Amazon, now Overture, it's all a bunch of BS.
influence a position for a search listing within a search result list generated by an Internet search engine.

Sounds like someone may have to define Internet search engine.

An internal db of advertisers probably doesn't qualify.
Has anybody thought of this reason for the lawsuit?

Google has identified themselves as a Pre-IPO company as recently as the job recruitment link a few days ago. What is the last thing a company getting ready to go public needs?

-Bad Press, or a lawsuit.

Shame on Overture for exploiting this fact and trying to sue Google. It is painfully obvious to me they sued in hopes Google will settle quickly out of court so they can make this bad press go away, and they can focus on their upcoming IPO.
Interesting find newriver :)

Job Openings at Google
... excellent benefits. Pre-IPO stock options. Spacious, colorful, fun work environment. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Source
Despite being labelled as one of makemetop's google's fan brigade, it seems to be that Google does have good PR and a brand recognition based on good, fast and non commercially influeced SERPS results in their main index.

Whether it should be or not is beyond the point - perception IS reality.

The other side to this therefore = Is Overture risking bad PR and downgrading their image because they are taking on a brand with strong perception of being fair and non-commercial, of being fair and having the high moral ground in the search engines wars from the viewpoint of the consumer? Add to this that the suit may be seen as frivolous, and to my way of thinking this move by the Gov may not only be frivolous but also badly misjudged. After all, at present Gov represents its shareholders and advertisers, Google represents google and the vast majority of Web consumers who want relevant non-commercially influenced results. The latter also realise that Google AdWords may help Google maintain the quality of their free index.

It may well turn into a fight between the Web community vs a private for profit company who has already tainted most search engines by determining SERP placement by pure commercial interests.

Some heavy PR investment is needed by Gov to back up a lawsuit that may have repercussions far beyond the law itself...

Featured Links:

1 Google Search45.10%
2 Yahoo Search 23.60%
3 Yahoo Directory9.30%
4 Lycos 4.60%
5 AltaVista.com3.40%
6 Fast Search 2.20%
7 Direct Hit 1.80%
8 Netscape 1.40%
9 Google Directory1.40%
10 Search MSN 1.20%
11 AOL Search 1.20%
12 Ask Jeeves 1.00%
13 DMOZ 1.00%
14 Excite.com 0.80%
15 Hotbot 0.60%
16 Search.com 0.60%
17 Dogpile 0.20%
18 WebCrawler 0.20%
19 Iwon 0.20%
20 Yahoo Search (Intl)0.20%
21AltaVista (Intl)0.20%
Skibum, seems like people want to keep this kind of info to themselves :)

Across my all my sites over the last couple of days:

23.55 % http://www.google.com
8.42 % http://google.yahoo.com
8.02 % http://www.google.co.uk
4.20 % http://www.altavista.com
4.03 % http://search.lycos.co.uk
3.27 % http://uk.google.yahoo.com
2.42 % http://uk.altavista.com
2.14 % http://search.msn.co.uk
1.36 % http://search.msn.com
0.93 % http://synd-uk.looksmart.co.uk
0.81 % http://aolsearch.aol.co.uk
0.74 % http://www.ask.co.uk
0.68 % http://search.lycos.com
0.47 % http://search.earthlink.net
0.34 % http://auto.search.msn.com
0.32 % http://msn.directhit.com
0.32 % http://www.mirago.co.uk
0.28 % http://www.google.fr
0.25 % http://www.google.de
The last 120 days:

1: 19.19% http://search.yahoo.com/
2: 14.76% http://www.google.com/
3: 7.46% http://search.msn.com/
4: 5.94% http://aolsearch.aol.com/
5: 5.70% http://google.yahoo.com/
6: 4.08% http://dir.yahoo.com/
7: 3.43% http://search.netscape.com/
8: 1.96% http://auto.search.msn.com/
9: 1.89% http://www.altavista.com/
10: 1.79% http://www.ask.com/
11: 1.53% http://directory.google.com/
12: 1.22% http://www.askjeeves.com/
13: 1.17% http://www.overture.com/
14: 1.04% http://search.excite.com/
15: 1.03% http://search.aol.com/
16: 0.83% http://search.dogpile.com/
17: 0.82% http://search.lycos.com/
18: 0.76% http://msn.directhit.com/
19: 0.65% http://hotbot.lycos.com/
20: 0.51% http://srd.yahoo.com/
21: 0.39% http://dir.lycos.com/
22: 0.36% http://websearch.cs.com/
23: 0.29% http://www.looksmart.com/
24: 0.26% http://www.ask.co.uk/
25: 0.25% http://search.iwon.com/
I won't give percentages but my top SE referers are:

Google
MSN
Yahoo/Google Search
Dogpile
AltaVista
Lycos

JKP
Here's mine for last 2 days on one site.

Microsoft internet Search 61.76%
Google 22.44%
LookSmart 4.77%
Yahoo! 4.49%
Lycos 1.59%
Ixquick Metasearch 0.97%
ninemsn 0.97%
Mamma 0.68%
Searchalot 0.40%
Netscape Netcenter 0.34%
All The Web 0.28%
Hotbot 0.23%
Allthesites.com 0.17%
AltaVista 0.17%
Evreka 0.17%
AOL 0.11%
Search.com 0.11%
Sympatico-Lycos Find It 0.11%
GOeureka 0.06%
JoeAnt.com 0.06%
La Toile du Qubec 0.06%
SurfWax 0.06%

Dazz
For the month of February so far-

12.68% Google
2 94 12.04% http://www.google.com/search
3 72 9.22% http:/
One of my sites last week:

Yahoo! 52,18%
Google 27,68%
Microsoft Internet Search 4,72%
AltaVista 2,29%
AOL Search 2,15%
Ask Jeeves 1,88%
rediff.com 0,84%
Excite 0,73%
Overture 0,64%
Direct Hit 0,59%
Dogpile 0,56%
Evreka 0,51%
All The Web 0,43%
Lycos 0,40%
Metacrawler 0,33%
Indiatimes.com 0,27%
Wish7.com 0,27%
Netscape Netcenter 0,25%
HotBot 0,22%
Search.com 0,22%
AT&T WorldNet Search 0,19%
Sonera Plaza Haku 0,19%
CompuServe Search 0,18%
Freeserve 0,18%
LookSmart 0,18%
123India.com 0,14%
Oingo 0,14%
easy4internet 0,13%
Goo 0,13%
Ihmemaa 0,13%
TurboFind.com 0,11%
iLOR 0,10%
ninemsn 0,10%
Webcrawler 0,10%
iWon 0,08%
Mamma 0,08%
Comet Web Search 0,05%
Ixquick Metasearch 0,05%
Nomade.fr 0,05%
Northern Light 0,05%
Sympatico-Lycos Find It 0,05%
BellSouth 0,03%
CommonName 0,03%
Engine54.com 0,03%
RealNames 0,03%
SureSeeker 0,03%
Vvisimo 0,03%
89.com 0,02%
Ah-ha.com 0,02%
Allthesites.com 0,02%
blueyonder 0,02%
C4 0,02%
CEOExpress 0,02%
GOeureka 0,02%
Jippii Haku 0,02%
Khoj 0,02%
MegaSpider 0,02%
MyBC 0,02%
origo 0,02%
Search123.com 0,02%
Sify.com 0,02%
Voila 0,02%
WolSearch 0,02%

Does anybody know anything about Wish7.com? It has stayed surprisingly high on my list for weeks.
One month - Danish based, international site:

1 Yahoo.com 26.65%
2 MSN Search 17.75%
3 Google 10.09%
4 Google, Germany 7.76%
5 AOL 4.28%
6 Jubii, Denmark 4.1%
7 Netscape 0,03
8 AltaVista.com 2.2%
9 Yahoo.com (Google) 1.62%
10 MSN Search, Denmark 1.61%
11 Yandex, Russia 1.58%
12 Excite 1.3%
13 Yahoo (Google), Germany 1.09%
14 Yahoo, UK 1.01%
15 AskJeeves, UK 0,01
16 Lycos, Germany 0.99%
17 Yahoo, Sweden 0.95%
18 LookSmart 0.9%
19 Yahoo, Denmark 0.87%
20 MSN Search, Sweden 0.8%
21 MetaCrawler 0.77%
22 dogpile.com 0.65%
23 MSN Search, UK 0.61%
24 Clix, Portugal 0.54%
25 All The Web/Fast 0.52%
Others 6.85%
Top 5 for the Month
Google 31.2%
Microsoft Network 23.36%
Yahoo 22.66%
AOL 4.91%
dogpile 3.08%
11 sites, last 28days (291k se refs) includes all country tlds:

60.02% Google (google.*)
9.13% Google.yahoo
9.01% DirectHit (includes bunch of direct hit sites like dh.msn/dh.comet, lycos...)
8.28% AskJeeves
1.67% Lycos
1.51% AllTheWeb
1.40% msn.com
1.32% Aol
0.55% HotBot
0.31% LookSmart
0.15% Yahoo.directory
0.10% Altavista

remaining percent by a huge list of misc search and meta search sites.
Last week:

Google 60 %
Yahoogle 8 %

I never have listed for the Looksmart and Yahoo directory listing, seeing Brett's listing I wonder if I should?

Brett I am glad I am not the only one heavily dependent on Google - Do you have a well described and frequent Looksmart directory listing at the moment?

Brett can you unveil your Directhit succes secret !
I am listed in a yahoo category, and my referrals look like this *sorry, dont have exact percentages..*

- search.yahoo.com,dir.yahoo.com tomost
- google (.com,.de,ch..), yahoogle,..
-some others like Voila, search.ch (ie. google)

Overalll I get like about 80-100 referrals from yahoo (of about 300 referrals total, site has about 1.200-1.300 hits a month (600-700 visits)

Skirril
>Directhit success secret

Killer titles and descriptions.
Very niched site

google.com/search
search.msn.com/
google.yahoo.com
dir.yahoo.com
search.yahoo.com
auto.search.msn.com
search.earthlink.net/
search.iwon.com/
overture.com/
srch.excite.com/
google.ca/
google.nl/
aolsearch.aol.com/
askjeeves.com/
directory.google.com
directory.mozilla.org
dmoz.org/
hotbot.lycos.com/
ixquick.com/
s1.ixquick.com
search.aol.com/
search.local.yahoo.com
search.lycos.com/
search.netscape.com/

And then lots of misc. directories and portals.
4003: http://www.google.com/
1100: http://google.yahoo.com/
832: http://www.altavista.com/
624: http://search.msn.com/
498: http://www.google.de/
468: http://de.dir.yahoo.com/
430: http://www.google.fr/
327: http://fr.search.yahoo.com/
318: http://www.google.nl/
298: http://search.t1msn.com.mx/
282: http://www.google.ca/
254: http://search.ke.voila.fr/
231: http://google.com/
218: http://www.google.co.uk/
211: http://dir.sohu.com/
200: http://de.search.yahoo.com/
196: http://suche.lycos.de/
191: http://fr.dir.yahoo.com/
190: http://directory.google.com/
184: http://www.google.be/
177: http://www.gratis-ting.dk/
167: http://www.ask.co.uk/
162: http://auto.search.msn.com/
149: http://search.dogpile.com/
143: http://www.google.com.br/
116: http://site.search.sohu.com/
113: http://mx.dir.yahoo.com/
113: http://www.ilse.nl/
103: http://www.kolumbus.fi/
100: http://search.netscape.com/

and then 7000 others :)

the local googles are on the rise...used to be our Danish and Dutch figures were totally dominated by Jubii and Ilse...and altavista is still used by a lot of people to find our non-English pages
My figures for Google to yahoogle traffic tie in with Eric's (for both the .com and the .uk versions) at somewhere between 3 & 4 to 1.

It is worth noting that google will often list 2 pages from one site whereas yahoo will only list one. Quite often you will get 2 referals for the price of one with google. This will skew the figures and make Google traffic look even more impressive than it already is (clever :))

Has anyone ever attempted to measure the percentage of double clicks you get with Google ?

I guess it could be as high as 50%
Last 8 Days

no referral 47.3%
google.com/search 24.6%
yahoo.com/bin/query 11.0%
www.google.ca/search 1.6%
msn.com/results.asp 1.6%
google.co.uk/search 0.6%
www.google.de/search 0.5%
altavista.com/sites/search/web 0.5%
google.com/custom 0.4%
dogpile.com/texis/search 0.4%
yahoo.com/bin/query_uk 0.3%
askjeeves.com/main/metaAnswer.asp 0.3%
ask.com/main/metaAnswer.asp 0.3%
www.google.fr/search 0.2%
www.google.nl/search 0.2%
www.google.it/search 0.2%
netscape.com/search.psp 0.2%
google.co.jp/search 0.1%
yahoo.com/bin/query_ca 0.1%
altavista.com/q 0.1%
overture.com/d/sr 0.1%
altavista.com/iepane 0.1%
directhit.com/msn/search.php 0.1%

Last 30d for European based/target tld
--------------------------------
66% google (4/6com, 1/5de, 1/6be, 1/6it)
09% MSN
08% AV
06% Yahoo
04% Dogpile
02% LYCOS
02% AOL
01% ASK
01% DH
01% L$
-------------------------------
billy

you've got some pretty high Google numbers, but I doubt anyone will match our google-yahoogle combination (frightening as it is)

Last week

66.72% Google
22.41% Yahoo/Google
06.72% MSN
01.13% Lycos
01.04% Altavista
etc.

You'll notice the combination of Google and Yahoo/Google comes to 90.13% of our referrals. Yikes!

Time to put Plan B into operation.
These are statistics from one of my sites which is regionally specific. The stats are from March to date.

Google.com (19.95)
Yahoo (11.78)
MSN (2.66)
Google.co.uk (1.5)
Overture.com (1.33)
Google.ca(1.29)
twics.com(1.21)
aol.com (0.82)
Google.de (0.76)
Google.fr(0.63)
msn.co.uk(0.43)
ananzi.co.za(0.39)
lycos.com (0.36)
ask.com(0.35)
mirago.co.uk(0.34)
askjeeves.com(0.32)
netscape.com(0.25)
google.nl(0.24)
altavista.com(0.23)
dogpile(0.21)
freeserve.com(0.17)
google.ch(0.17)
google.it(0.16)
excite.com(0.15)
msn.ca(0.13)
bbc.co.uk(0.13)
...and the list goes on for at least another 500

I have other sites which currently are almost 100% Google.
Last month 3 month old domain

1 Google 3,693 47.03%
2 Yahoo 3,040 38.72%
3 Microsoft Network 706 8.99%
4 Lycos 112 1.42%
5 Look Smart 96 1.22%
6 DirectHit 70 0.89%
7 Netscape 65 0.82%
8 Ask Jeeves 21 0.26%
9 All The Web 16 0.2%
10 AltaVista 11 0.14%
11 dmoz 4 0.05%
12 CompuServe 4 0.05%
13 Evreka 4 0.05%
14 metacrawler 2 0.02%
15 Web.de 2 0.02%
16 Searchalot 2 0.02%
17 AOL NetFind 2 0.02%
18 Excite 1 0.01%
Yahoo 8744 39.22%
Google 6055 27.16%
Other 2877 12.91%
Lycos 2238 10.04%
Msn 1133 5.08%
AOL 536 2.40%
Overture 146 0.65%
Altavista 120 0.54%
Excite 105 0.47%
Hotbot 104 0.47%
Looksmart 80 0.36%
Netscape 47 0.21%
Dogpile 46 0.21%
Webcrawler 35 0.16%
MetaCrawler27 0.12%

Success of Yahoo is by getting a free listing, and most of them are directort hits (searches from dir).

Gosh, .. you are so high

Me ?

Google -> No More Than 30 Unique Hits? of 170 Unique Hits a Day.
Google 52.43%
Yahoo 26.80%
MSN 10.00%
Altavista 6.26%
Lycos 1.14%
Dogpile 0.95%
HotBot 0.58%

Frankly, I'd describe this as alarming.
1 Google 82.93%
2 Yahoo 9.68%
3 MSN 4.42%
4 Netscape 1.02%
5 Lycos 0.76%

Sorry Alecto 92.61% Google/Yahoogle - highly specialised technical site. We are not really looking to target the home user so do not optimise for portal.

Please let people start using Teoma.
Last 6 days, rounded off

28%: http://www.google.com/
12%: bookmarks
11%: http://images.google.com/
5%: http://www.worldlingo.com/ (onsite translator)
5%: http://search.yahoo.com/
5%: http://google.yahoo.com/
2%: http://translate.google.com/
2%: http://mp3.about.com/
2%: http://www.musicrobot.com/
2%: http://www.altavista.com/
2%: http://216.239.51.100/ (Google English)
2%: http://search.msn.com/
2%: http://dir.yahoo.com/
1%: http://www.google.ca/
1%: http://images.google.ca/
1%: http://www.google.co.jp/
1%: http://images.google.de/
1%: http://www.ask.com/
1%: http://search.dogpile.com/
1%: http://directory.google.com/
1%: http://www.askjeeves.com/
1%: http://auto.search.msn.com/
1%: http://images.google.fr/
1%: http://www.google.fr/
1%: http://www.google.it/
1%: http://www.google.de/
1%: http://images.google.it/
1%: http://srd.yahoo.com/
1%: http://search.lycos.com/
1%: http://hotbot.lycos.com/
1%: http://www.google.co.uk/
1%: http://www.google.nl/
1%: http://aolsearch.aol.com/
----last--week------

52.78% Google
17.59% Microsoft Network
14.26% Yahoo
05.93% AltaVista
02.07% AOL
01.43% Lycos
01.36% Excite
00.98% Nutscape
00.92% dogpile
00.52% Look$mart

poor perfomance of Y! due to no category list...any help :(
My top 25 for March

I'm an Australian based inbound tour operator, specializing in the Japanese market.

13.0% google.yahoo.co.jp
9.9% search.yahoo.co.jp
7.8% www.yahoo.com
7.7% search.ninemsn.com.au
7.0% www.google.com
6.4% www.goo.ne.jp
5.3% search.msn.com
4.6% search.msn.co.jp
4.3% dir.yahoo.co.jp
3.9% www.google.co.jp
3.1% www.infoseek.co.jp
2.7% www.excite.co.jp
1.2% cgi.search.biglobe.ne.jp
1.2% msie.optusnet.com.au
1.1% search.xtramsn.co.nz
1.1% au.altavista.com
1.0% aolsearch.aol.com.au
0.8% search.msn.co.uk
0.8% search.optusnet.excite.com.au
0.7% search.goeureka.com.au
0.7% www.google.co.nz
0.6% dir.dion.ne.jp
0.6% search.excite.com.au
0.5% search.fresheye.com
0.5% wisenut.lycos.co.jp
Here are the specifics for my main site YTD:

1. Google 53.22%
2. Microsoft Network 17.14%
3. Yahoo 12.74%
4. dogpile 4.09%
5. AOL NetFind 3.52%
6. CompuServe 41.39%
7. About.com 1.14%
8. MegaSpider 1.04%
9. Overture 0.79%
10. Excite 0.70%
11. metacrawler 0.67%
12. DirectHit 0.67%
13. iWon 0.49%
14. Look Smart 0.46%
15. Ask Jeeves 0.38%
16. AltaVista 0.34%
17. Lycos 0.28%
18. Netscape 0.28%
19. SearchFuel 0.23%
20. Mamma 0.13%

It's amazing how far AltaVista and Lycos have fallen...
For a regional travel site, March 2002:

google.com/search (PageRank #1, mucho incomming link ODP: 30% of referals)
msn.com/results.asp (got in LS before it became L$)
yahoo.com/bin/query (5.4 pages per visitor)
google.com/imgres (mucho bandwith, 1.2 page per visitor, alt txt & keyword.jpg working well)
aol.com/dirsearch.adp (thank you ODP)
www.google.ca/search (to be so high, Google must now have a big share of search in Canada)
ref from our 1 page .net version of our site, which we submitted to yahoo directory after waiting for months for the .com to be listed, 6.1 page/visitor
altavista.com/sites/search/web (not strong but not dead yet)
yahoo.com/bin/search
dogpile.com/texis/search (probably our overture listing)
lycos.com/main/default.asp
www.google.de/search (without a single german word on the site!)

Featured Links:

If your have too much time on your hands for the good of your health, or like to hyperanalyse the various spiders/unique referrals or whatever from your weblogs, then you have something like webtr*nds to see how your site is ticking over.

Since I dont want to be splattering statistics all over WebmasterWorld, I just wanted to create a thread about looking at statistics and how you should perceive them. Of course, every site is unique but im sure there are some general rules of thumb that you can relate to.

So if youve read every other new post in WebmasterWorld, and you want some more WebmasterWorld, then check out this from my web site statistics, and see what you agree/disagree with and can elaborate on.....Im just taking excerpts and suggesting something useful (hopefully). The timeframe used here is last week, pre-good update and during the holidays for many countries across the world

RETURNING VISITORS

Unique Visitors 6,182
Visitors Who Visited Once 5,263

I look at this and think
1. Good, a respectable % of people come back to see more of the site after their first visit
2. Any change in relative % could indicate a re-indexing of a popular search index bringing in more uniques
3. Any change in relative % could also mean people dont think as highly of the site on average as they once did

SE REFERRALS

We have talked plenty about these, so I'll skip it

TOP DOCUMENTS

Pages below my home page seem to get the best page views, which seems obvious being in the middle of the site. Is it the same for everyone else? The generic keywords on my second tier target the bigger keywords, pulling in the biggest referrals

The money pages at the bottom of the navigation structure are content specific and #1's for niche keywords. The results of this are pretty much reflected in the stats

ENTRY PAGES

The home page gets 40% of incoming visitors as their first page load. Obviously most inbound links point to the home page, so we can respect the 40% comprises of a respectable amount of incoming links. Also, the most generic keywords of all are targetted on this page (i.e. one word)....so any increase in ranking overall for the site should boost ranking for this keyword.....keep this in mind.

One of my second tier pages....a dynamic page with a nicely sized db behind it pulls in 15% of entry pages...making the total 55%. Take the following into account

1. Any second tier page is more or less exclusive on the home page, therefore is visible to the 40% mentioned above, as well as people from other areas of the site reaching the home page (the other 45% who entered some other way)
2. The PR from the home page and all the follow through from PR linking to the second page makes it rank better in the likes of Google
3. The flow of traffic between home > money pages and money pages > home

So...in a nutshell, slightly less generic keywords are targetted here, because with less competition, but alias with less impact as your home page, you want to be ranking well for more generic keywords than badly for a more generic one here.

Im sure you get what im pointing at here....its navigation and keywords.....

The money keywords and pages....

Brett made a model where you target your keywords according to the navigation structure. The bottom pages of the structure are known as the money pages, where your site can harvest in all the niche keywords that your site focuses upon. Basically, the word content pretty much comes into play here.

In my instance....good money pages get about 1% of your referrals. One page in particular is a gem receiving twice as many hits as any other page in the same part of the nav structure.

In light of this, perhaps I should bring that particular page up one level and add more content in this area, thus maximising this keyword and niching it further.

Anyways, money pages are what your site is all about, dont play games...just target the keywords that suit the pages and in general you get rewarded for the traffic (believe me I aint been doin it long).

TOP EXIT PAGES

This pretty much looks similar to my top entry pages, which can be a bad thing :o). I could assume that people leave as soon as they go, or perhaps en masse they just leave on average after X amount of views....whatever. I guess if you want to study this area more closely web logs and better web stats than mine would answer any queries here :)

SINGLE ACCESS PAGES

My site is content specific, but 28% of people access my home page, and dont go any further. I guess this is pretty negative, considering that is over half of people that enter from that page (the 40% mentioned above). However, on the same note, its easy to click on a site by mistake, or click and change your mind etc etc etc

TOP DIRECTORIES (in order of hits)

Anything thats repeated on the site..ie design I put in a specific folder. These are the directories most accessed on my site. Hopefully much of this gets cached on a users first visit, then a super fast site awaits them :)

Below these cached directories are dynamic pages that are 100% uncached, and therefore like munching bandwidth

Afer that, all the unique text and their respective folders bring up the rear (in order of hits)

TOP FILE TYPES ACCESSED
#/filetype/Files/Kbytes
1 gif 31,470 16,760
2 htm 15,350 172,720
3 js 5,800 9,432
4 asp 5,425 226
5 txt 214 114
6 jpg 199 1,609

I use some gifs for design...but apart from that...content is king on my site :o) and therefore the most accessed.

RETURNING VISITORS

Number of Visits/Number of Visitors/% of Total Unique Visitors
1 visit 5263 85.13%
2 visits 455 7.36%
3 visits 164 2.65%
4 visits 83 1.34%
5 visits 46 0.74%
6 visits 31 0.5%
7 visits 26 0.42%
8 visits 24 0.38%
9 visits 26 0.42%
10 or more 64 1.03%

What I assume here
1. If 1 visit % is high, then im getting lots of new referrals OR people aint interested in the site
2. If 2 visits plus % is high, the site is sticky
3. Those that keep coming back might be willing to part with money :o)

SITE ACTIVITY - THE JUICY BIT

Time Interval Hits Page Views Kbytes Visits
Mon 04/01/2002 9,424 3,430 27,049 K 1,056
Tue 04/02/2002 9,754 3,572 30,316 K 1,128
Wed 04/03/2002 10,146 3,720 28,972 K 1,250
Thu 04/04/2002 10,872 3,958 28,881 K 1,108
Fri 04/05/2002 15,489 5,794 38,031 K 1,341
Sat 04/06/2002 9,488 3,752 32,476 K 1,224
Sun 04/07/2002 16,230 8,029 39,140 K 1,570

What can be assumed from this?
1. Since its easter holidays...not much in the long term
2. cache you later baby....See how much bandwidth on average people are using
3. Relatively low number of hits because its text based, but a jump in hits out of line can indicate many new visitors (perhaps from a new long term source)
4. The Googly-type update is gonna increase those numbers....(thats just a wish)

ACTIVITY LEVEL BY HOURS

Pretty much when people are awake they will tend to view your site more than when they are asleep :o). From this the only thing I take note of is the busiest hours and reasons why (geographical location and reasons for use)

PAGE VIEW PER VISITOR

Number of Pages Viewed Number of Visits % of Total Visits
0 pages 791 8.81%
1 page 3,680 41.01%
2 pages 1,325 14.76%
3 pages 811 9.03%
4 pages 562 6.26%
5 pages 417 4.64%
6 pages 298 3.32%
7 pages 241 2.68%
8 pages 152 1.69%
9 pages 126 1.4%
10 pages 97 1.08%
11 or more pages 473 5.27%

0 pages? Im stumped by this, im assuming its people who click back before they load the page up. Those viewing 1 page either got the info they wanted and sped off/didnt find it OR didnt like the site.

AVERAGE TIME SPENT ON SITE

The longer, the better

The rest of my stats include top browser types, SE referrals, top URL's etc that Id rather just skip, as these areas are pretty much well documented in here. But what about the rest? What about the stuff above.....

I appreciate there are a 100001 reasons for stats being stats...and unique to everyone, but im sure there are some general assumptions that can reassure you while you look at them. If you dont find anything useful in stats apart from curing your curiosity, then youre wasting your time :)

I just wanted some feedback/expansion on the things Ive mentioned, and any other method of tracking that you think should be discussed with the people of WebmasterWorld :)
I work on several sites that split lengthy articles and columns into two or more pages. I find it's very important to track the drop-off from page to page, especially when we are paying for content and need to give the author feedback.

I mentioned my stats for reader drop-off in another thread. If I hadn't been watching these numbers, I'd have missed something important. At the very least, I've improved page views (and ad Impressions) with the changes I made.
It can be enlightening to expand top pages, single access sessions, top entry and exit pages into the hundreds to determine what is really going on within a site, and if you have the time to crunch through all that stuff. By doing some calculations you can identify the pages most likely to result in longer visits, make some inferences about user behavior.

For a site that has a conversion event, like sales, memebership, newsletter signups, etc...Top paths would seem to be a very valuable table. Does anyone ahve a good way of extracting meaningful data from it?

Often times the conversion event results in a dymanic page being called as the confirmation page, so it's good to know what page that is in the logs and in WT have the table with top dynamic pages (or whatever it is called) extend at least until that page shows up so that an overall conversion rate for the site can be calculated.

A membership site such as WebMasterWorld can probably get MUCH better information about visitor behavior due to the authentication.
nice post brotherhood_of_LAN
beyond of these topics I also take in account and the duration of the visitors how long they stay to look at the site and the general tendency of every page/visits especially after changes of redesign or content.
billy, thanks thats a good point, ive just totally updated the site

ive removed pop ups and every form of ad, so hopefully average viewing time will increase from 6 minutes at the mo!
0 Page views may be people only loading images. hence the no page views.
With WebTrends, it seem that the length of time spent on the site can be a very questionable stat. It will often come in around 15-17 minutes on one large site we deal with when up to 50% of the visits are single access sessions. It seems there might be a lot of browsers that end up on the site and then move on to a different browser such that the session stays open and the length of visit gets artificially inflated. The median might be a more accurate stat.
Skibum, you also have to consider your external links and ads on your site, perhaps you may use target _blank?

If so, some people could have a site running in the background for hours, even though they finished browsing ages ago

Just one of the many things to consider at hand ;)
I just did a study for one site, and they bragged that they had a 35 minute average time on the site. But when I dropped just a few overblown monsters from the mix, the greatest majority of visits were in the 1-2 minute area.

That was exactly what I would have expected, since their sales were basically nowhere. But their stats package wasn't letting them ask the right questions!

You really do need to dig, and if individual stats don't hang together in a coherent picture, find out why.
Greetings and Gidday from downunder folks,

I also find the browser type very important, have seen in other threads here at WebmasterWorld that everyone is using 5x and 6x with netscape dying, not the case with my sites.

The mix varies, but I even have NS 2x and 3x still visiting, so as you can imagine, I don't experiment much with the bleeding edge, you beaut bells and whistles stuff. (Have to say though, NS even at it's best, is tracking less than 22% total traffic on our sites, seems to be losing out to AOL, who've had a tremendous ad campaign here in Oz for the last 12 months.)

I must say though, when I look at my Session Origins for Week:

Total search engine referred sessions : 14.18%
Total referred session : 65.91%
Total blind (no referrer) sessions : 19.91%

I wonder if I should continue to devote as much time as I do on search engine submissions, or would finally giving into PFI or PPC improve this?

Intersting thread, as always.

Cheers and hooroo
JP
Visits 11,100 for 8 days

SE Referrals 2,014 (for some reason its been a quiet google week)
No Referrer 3,035
Rest 5401 (must be links then eh!)

Yep Google rules the SE world, but bookmarking and links from other sites without a shadow of a doubt play their part in referrals
Traffic is king, but when you have it, analyzing user behavior becomes important. Surprisingly, no off shelf software does it right, to my knowledge. I would like stats package that can calculate numbers for sets of visitor data against sets of action.

Actions that first come to mind could be:

1. lenght of stay
2. visit to your action page, e.g. download, subscribe, buy, whatever.

Visitor data can be lots more, just most obvious:

1. Browser
2. Country
3. Entry page
4. Last page seen
5. individual referrer
6. all search engines
7. searchengine1
8. searchengine2...
and probably most valuable
9. keyphrase1
10. keyphrase2
11. keyphrase3
...

Then combine these sets to your needs.
Wouldn't be nice to spot things like, for example:

keyphrase1 coming from search engine1 lands on action page more often than same keyphrase1 coming from search engine2, or
specific country tends to leave site after seeing one specific page more than average, or
entry page5 does wonders for browser1 but browser2 users leave right away, or
keyphrase3, that brings n% of traffic, rarely ends up on action page...

Hello developers?
I think it would be near imposible, without bundling an client-side object, to get a reliable length of stay. Let's take my surfing habits, since I skew many a websites' stats:

I'll go to a webpage, e.g. Webmasterworld. I browse the links, and shift-click any link I want to read. I do this until some arbitrary moment when my brain says, Hey, you have a lot of open windows, why not just start reading the content. Now, I'll start surfing these open windows, closing them one at a time when finished reading them. I may click on external links, and be on five different websites at the same time.

If I do this at night, which I frequently do, and decide to go to bed, I leave the unread or important webpages up overnight. It may be 12 hours.

What could a developer do to combat this? Maybe eliminate large outliers, which is probably the best option, but what if someone really is surfing the site for 45mins? Maybe a surf time vs. page view factor, which eliminates an outlier which has been on the site for 45mins but only seen two pages. In my example, however, I have many page views and a long length of stay.

I'm still a javascript novice, but doesn't it have an on_focus command that could be useful in this situation? Maybe use js to write start/stop timestamp variables to calculate a length of stay only when the window is active...
I have found two statistics to be very meaningful.

Visitors need to be looked at in three groups. New, Returning within 30 Days, and Returning After 30 Days. Any Visitor you haven't seen in over a year should be treated as New.

Bounce-offs are those Visitors that just view one page. They should be classified as New, Returning within 30 Days and Returning after 30 Days.

Some New Bounce-offs probably are lost opportunities while others just wandered in by mistake.

Returning within 30 Days Bounce-offs might be indicating that your content isn't changing fast enough.
I 100% agree - the logs are the best source for user/site analyzes (when you have patience or when you use a good software to process the logs).

I use summary for crunching - but all image, js, css, and any other no-html hit is filtered out. Reduce to the HTML-Hits (or simply ad-place-impressions if your business is selling ads). Or do you sell gif's? ;)
Cyril wrote:
I have found two statistics to be very meaningful.

That sounds great - but how are you getting (or cross-referencing) that information? I need to know! :)

The most valuable information I find from stats is not what the data is, in absolute terms, but how those numbers change over time. As you may have discovered, different packages can give different results for the same set of logs - and definitions of terms are not exactly standardized.

So putting too much importance on the absolute value of a number in any given report is a questionable practice. But looking for % changes from one period to the next is exceptionally useful, especially when bumped up against a timeline of website changes.

I also find it's very important to clean or filter the raw logs intelligently to come as close as you can to comparing apples to apples on a clean baseline. For example, for many stats, it's good to eliminate spider hits, or in-house website use (filtered out by IP).
Dr. Stephen Turner, author of analog says Almost all ISP's now have their own cache. This means that if I try to look at one of your pages and anyone else from the same ISP has looked at that page recently, the cache will have saved it, and will give it out to me without ever telling you about it. (This applies whatever my browser settings.) So hundreds of people could read your pages, even though you'd only sent it out once.

At best, a server's access_log gives vague, inaccurate statistics. Still, I choose this method over cookies.
Mardi_Gras asks: That sounds great - but how are you getting (or cross-referencing) that information? I need to know!

A cookie and database combination can store the date of last visit by IP. This combination I have found works over 99% of the time. Knowing the date of last visit allows you to determine whether the visit is New, Within 30 Days or After 30 Days.

The same tracking software can determine if which pages were viewed by session or what I called a bounce-off.

I think both of the top of the line offerings by WebTrends and Hitbox can get you these stats along with several other tracking services.

tedster,
I think both trends and changes to underlining stats are more important than the actual numbers. There is a constant error rate that keeps the numbers from being perfect but trends and changes are fairly reliable.

keyplyr,
Cacheing problems can be reduced by employing cache-busting schemes. I bet people on this forum can supply information about that.

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I thought it would be useful to list the deprecated HTML tags and attributes, and deal with any related issues. CSS will take care of most.

If I'm missing anything, please help me fill out the list. At the very least, I can stop writing deprecated code. Patch-ups will come a bit later.

Deprecated Tags
<applet> - use <object>
<basefont>
<center>
<dir> - use <ul>
<font>
<isindex> - use <input>
<listing> - use <pre>
<menu> - use <ul>
<plaintext> - use <pre>
<s> - use <del>
<strike> - use <del>
<u>
<xmp> - use <pre>

Deprecated Attributes
align=
alink=
background=
bgcolor=
color=
hspace=
link=
size=
text=
type=
vlink=
vspace=

Also, width= and height= are deprecated attributes for <td> elements. The recommendation is to define width for <table>, and let the browser sort out the individual cells.

<edited to fix formatting>

The recommendation is to define width for <table>, and let the browser sort out the individual cells.

BWAHAHAHAHaaaaa.... ::whimper:: They've got to be kidding. Oh, that's ugly... and deprecating align= which was the only reliable way I knew of to center anything? The least they could do is wait until a reliable replacement comes along before deprecating something.

::sigh:: I guess I'll finally stop using font tags for colored text, and start using classes instead. Yes, I'm marching towards full CSS, stumbling and tripping along the way though I may be...
Not to worry, the browser support for these basics is pretty solid, even in NN4. The problems with CSS come when you get into the things HTML never did anyway.

<My Wish: IE, please don't render dotted borders as dashed borders in your next version, OK?>
Great heads up tedster, thankfully ive just changed all my site getting rid of most of my probs! That centre one is a bit of a downer though

what about bgcolor...does this mean cells will have to be replaced with repeating 1x1 gifs???
CSS allows you to set bgcolor and background images for divs...

I'm finding that most of what you'd normally use tables for can be accomplished with divs, the upper-leftmost of them being absolutely positioned, and the others in the table area being relatively positioned to that one. (Just redesigned my essay/blog/rant site with divs & CSS instead of <table>s and <font>s... It seems to function well in NN, IE and Opera, but it DOES use align=center in some of the div tags...)

Relative positioning among divs seems to default to whatever div comes immediately previous in the actual page code, which leaves a lot of interesting room to experiment with page content optimization positioning vs. page content visual positioning. (could easily cause a WHOPPER of a headache if you tried to get too tricky)

<added>(I'm now getting a vague idea about replacing center with 100% width divs that have varying amounts of margin or padding... Like instead of an 80% width centered div, could you have a 100% width div with 10% margins?)</added>
Mivox one thing ive been doing, that doesnt require centre for the main bulk of a page

5% left cell, 70% main body cell, 5% padding cell, 20% space_for_navigation_cell

but in some include files i might want to still centre stuff without using the bloat of extra HTML.

/added
ie the main body cell is your centered content
Mivox, try this CSS gimme

{text-align:center;}

;)
Hola. If the <font> tag is to go away (I understand deprecated to mean it's fallen from favor but not necessarily dropped) what will be its replacement - a style declaration?
lorax - yup, the class attribute works great.
Mivox, try this CSS gimme
{ text-align:center; }

:) Got that one, but what I was thinking of specifically was a div with a background image, approx 75% of page width, centered. The text is actually left-aligned within the div.

Got the interior margins set to allow some nice breathing room around the text and the outside of the div, it's just keeping the tiled background image limited to that floating box look in the middle of the page. Setting the div width percentage w/CSS and just using align=center in the div tag was so easy...
{text-align:center;}

Man, I was reading through the post thinking, oh, I found the answer to that one and sure enough, papabaer was right there.

I've been using that text-align attribute quite a bit and it works quite well. No probs that I can see and I'm testing a wide variety of browsers and on PC and Mac platforms. I'm on the Mac now.

P.S. Couldn't you just use <span> tags with text-align attributes?
>Hola. If the <font> tag is to go away (I understand deprecated to mean it's fallen from favor but not necessarily dropped) what will be its replacement - a style declaration?

Hello lorax, I've been using the <span> tag to define inline elements and then classes for block elements.

If you were specifying that a title somewhere in the middle of a paragraph is to be blue and bold, you would assign a <span> tag to that title and specify attributes in your css.
Seems as if I have just been deprecated.
Well, all in all this is likely a good thing.
Not sure why, but I am sure someone can tell us.
Tear.
It's POWER, pure and simple... albeit a trifle unweildly at times, but the adrenaline rush is definately worth it!

;)
tedster, hopefully you won't mind this CSS reference for HTML translations to CSS.

CSS Pointers Group

I also found Opera's CSS support page somewhat helpful...

Opera support for CSS

(edited by: pageoneresults at 3:22 am (utc) on April 9, 2002)
Giving up <font> tags is not so bad... as Pageone notes (hey! how's it goin' eh?), you can gain quite a bit of control using styles.

I have always been a sucker for drop-caps using the span tag and applying a .class to the first letter of an opening paragraph is something I use on occasion. It's simple, it's easy and it is all style (no image involved).

.drpcp1
{
font-weight: bold;
color: #000;
font-size: 26px;
float: left;
background-color : Silver;
padding : 0px 2px;
}

.drpcp2
{
font-weight: bold;
color: #600;
font-size: 26px;
float: left;
background-color: #fc0;
padding : 0px 2px;
}

(based on a paragraph font-size:12px ;)
The attributes that Tedster lists are what I believe may be the most challenging for many to adapt to... many of these have become second-nature for us.
<font>

I'll agree with you on that one! At first I was totally baffled by css and then one day it clicked, and I haven't been the same since!

The <font> tag is going to be the most difficult for people to break away from. But, when they find out what you can do with it in css, they won't ever use that <font> tag again!

You can assign font attributes to both block level elements and inline elements. Anything you did with your deprecated html tags can now be done in your css. And much, much more! The same applies to the rest of the list that tedster has posted above.
As long as all the code amounts to less being used, im all for it
Me too! This...

<span class=bi80>Content here</span>

sure beats this...

<font color=#808080 other attributes><b><i>Content here</i></b></font>

I can see now why the <font> tag is deprecated. Can you imagine how many instances of the <font> tag there are online? Whoa! Can anybody give an accurate estimate?
CENTERED CONTENT!!!! Ahh... I can breathe easy now...

#content { margin-right: 15%; margin-left: 15%; top: 80px }
<!-- top: 80px because I have a 72px tall header, aligned left -->
#textblock { font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Geneva; background: white url(http://domain.com/image.gif) repeat scroll; text-align: left; margin: 10px 15px; padding: 10px 15px; width: auto; overflow: visible; visibility: visible }


If you nest <div id=textblock> INSIDE <div id=content>, #textblock ends up being a nice little block of contrasting background, filled with text, CENTERED on the page, in NN 4.7, IE 5.1 & Opera 5/Mac. Scales perfectly to page width on resize.

Dunno about the PC browsers, but I haven't had a really big problem with PC browsers mucking up my CSS. I think if you can get it right in NN, Opera and IE on either platform, your proverbial behind must be pretty well covered...
Hi, my name is Jason...

...and I'm addicted to HTML tags. I KNOW I should stop, really, but it's soooo hard to do.

...but thanks to a little inspiration from papbaer and tedster, I'm on the track to deprecated tag freedom!! Thanks guys!! -- I probably would have never had the willpower to move towards w3c validation if it wasn't for your inspiration.

...by the way, anybody want to go out for a <font> tag? or a bgcolor=?

...O.K., so I have a little ways to go...

</font>
</td>
</body>
</html> I trying to.....
But wait, you left out...

</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>
</div>
</body>
</html>

The conversion is fairly quick once you get the hang of it. Just think, you'll be stripping away 30-50% of your html bloat. That means an increase in text to html ratio which has been discussed recently.

Hey mivox, congratulations. I got dizzy reading through that CSS!
PageOneResults, how long did it take you to see the light in the first place. Then, jow long did it take for you to become totally compliant?
It's a big temptation to just splash <span> tags all over the place, but you never really get everything that CSS can do for you that way - and in the end you really want what CSS can do, even though there's both a learning curve and (presently at least) a browser support challenge.

Not that <span> is a taboo - it's totally valid. But you're better off thinking of it as a last resort.

> tedster, hopefully you won't mind this CSS reference for HTML translations to CSS.

pageoneresults, no problem with links to an authoritative resource - unless, of course we've already got the info right here. Those are two very helpful resources, thanks.
Hello JustTrying. I actually started a couple of years ago with just the basics. In the last 4 months I've gone from CSS1 to CSS2 and now reading up on CSS3. I have four sites now that I've either developed or have rebuilt from scratch that are now using CSS and Absolute Positioning.

Thanks to the information that I've gained here at the forums and my own testing, I'm now a CSSaholic. Oh, I'm nowhere near the level of papabaer (you should sticky him for some URL's!), but I am producing well structured sites and highly optimized html. All four sites have validated for HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS2. I literally validated just over 100 pages with the W3C a few days ago. Cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste, revalidate, revalidate, revalidate...

Once you get the first core template of the site validated, the rest of the pages are a breeze!
> and my own testing

There's a strange kind of geeky pleasure I get out of testing various CSS setups. I only wish I had more time to hack away - it is kind of addictive, and practical at the same time.

It reminds me of a lost day a few years ago when I did nothing but play with tables until I had them nailed.

But css takes a bit more than one day, doesn't it :)
tedster, can you give me an example of how the <span> element would be replaced in this instance?

I have a paragraph that starts off with a bold headline, a <br> after the bold headline, and then normal paragraph copy. It looks like this...

<p><span class=bi80>Paragraph Header</span><br>
Paragraph content</p>

How would you go about controlling the appearance of just that paragraph header and not have it affect the rest of the <p> tag or block element? I haven't quite gotten that far in my CSS journey and would definitely like to learn now before I start <spanning> all over the place!
pageone... take a look at this: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/selector.html#first-line-pseudo
Aw man, every time you or tedster reply to one of these topics I end up losing sleep! ;)

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