www.talkcyprus.org

erolz · Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 4195 Location: Kyrenia / Girne

First off I must stress it is very very early days as far as our listings in the search engines go. It takes time to get entered and move up the ranks. The only search engine we have made it into so far (to any real degree) is MSN search, siomply because this is the 'fastest' engine at adding and updating new entries. We are not in google at all yet (properly as a site) even though we have been google botted serveral times.

the following page (again produced with sw using a free 1 month trial so might not have these for long) basically shows a list of search terms (like 'cyprus talk') and where we appear order wise when searching MSN for these terms.Ignore the summary and scroll down a bit to the list of terms. The data re 'change in position' is pretty meaningless as I have been playing around with the sw and so the 'previous results' are not correct / relevant. Anyway it gives some idea of the progress we are making and I am confident that over the comminf weeks and months we will steadily progress up these lists.

http://www.talkcyprus.org/searchrankmsn.htm

Our best placing atm is searching on MSN on the term "cyprus chat forum" where we come 17th in the list of sites and appear on the second page.

Crash Test Dummy · Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 4911 Location: London(ish)

is there a way we can change this move up the ranks?
maybe go ontop of another forum?

Dhavlos · Joined: 13 Aug 2005 Posts: 4697 Location: Birmingham

hey, i just typed in 'talkcyprus' on google and the cypruslinks website came up with the websites name, as well as the rest of the page of other website linking us to them

good work people

sadly when i typed in talk cyprus, wikpedia stuff came up, nothing to do with this website

erolz · Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 4195 Location: Kyrenia / Girne

Giorgio wrote: is there a way we can change this move up the ranks?
maybe go ontop of another forum?

There is no direct way (other than paying for 'sponsor links' on some search engines.

However there are things one can do to help the site move up the ranks.

I am no expert on all this stuff and have never really looked into it before starting this site but this is what I understand at the moment.

How high up the rankings on a search engine you come is related to

1: How many matches there are between the key words the searcher types in and occurances of these key words in the site in questions. So increasing the occurance and frequency of these key words on the site should help our rankings (see my sig ;) )

2. How much traffic the site gets in general. The more traffic a site gets the higher up the rankings it goes. So visiting the site regularly helps and telling and ecouraging others to do so helps. Also you can consider adding the 'Alexa' toolbar to your browser (http://download.alexa.com/index.cgi?p=).

3. How many links from other sites there are to this site. The more traffic the external site with a link has the better. Linking 'keywords' also helps. So rather than just putting the url put a short description and the url with each of the keywords as a link. You can get links from other sites to here by asking the owners of such sites to set them up, or using a submit url process if the site has one and by placing the links in your signatures at other forums.

All of these things should help.

Also please remember that these things take time to have an effect. For example the alexa toolbar shows us with a site ranking of 1,700,000. This ranking howver is a three month moving average and the site has only existed since 11/12th August. In the weekly average we are currently nearer 400,000 than 1.7 million. So be patient.

cannedmoose · Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 7:25 pm Post subject:

Does this alexa toolbar come with lots of adware etc.?

erolz · Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 4195 Location: Kyrenia / Girne

cannedmoose wrote: Does this alexa toolbar come with lots of adware etc.?

No it is 'safe' and akin to the google toolbar (I have both on my browser atm. Before starting the site I just used to use the google one but added alexa to help with this sites stats). There is a small 'add' on the alexa toolbar for 'amazon.com' it's sister site but that is it.

Crash Test Dummy · Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 4911 Location: London(ish)

there is a programme that just keeps refreshing the page erol. use your computer skills to try it.

erolz · Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 4195 Location: Kyrenia / Girne

Giorgio wrote: there is a programmet that just keeps refreshing the page erol. use your computer skills to try it.

I do not condone the use of 'tricks' to try and improve a sites ratings and rankings in search engines. It undermines the whole point and usefulness od search engines. I consider all the suggestions I have made to be 'legitimate' ways of increasing the sites rankings and ratings and urge others to not be tempted into slipping into 'illegitimate' ways of helping, even with the besy of intentions.

In any case the 'strategy' you suggest will not work. From the alexa faq on site rankings / ratings

Quote: What are Page Views?
Page views measure the number of pages viewed by Alexa Toolbar users. Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site. The page view rank is a ranking of all sites based solely on the total number of page views (not page views per user). The three-month changes are determined by comparing a site's current page view numbers with those from three month ago.

I appreciate your motives Giorgio but let's be careful of the means we use as well. I want this site to be well ranked and well rated on search engines but I want us to achieve this the 'right way' as well.

Thanks

thebrix · Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 8:19 pm Post subject:

erolz wrote: I do not condone the use of 'tricks' to try and improve a sites ratings and rankings in search engines. It undermines the whole point and usefulness od search engines. I consider all the suggestions I have made to be 'legitimate' ways of increasing the sites rankings and ratings and urge others to not be tempted into slipping into 'illegitimate' ways of helping, even with the besy of intentions.

The one that would be No.1 in terms of credibility and would get shedloads of visits would be, when BBC News Online publishes a story on Cyprus and all that, to get a link to "talkcyprus.org" in the list of associated sites on the right of the page!

I wonder:

1. How that list is derived;

2. How and if it can be influenced? (By bringing the BBC's attention to it, not by "illicit means" :)

Alastair

Dhavlos · Joined: 13 Aug 2005 Posts: 4697 Location: Birmingham

ive emailed the BBC on this, trying to see if they would put the website on their cyprus-related news points, however they have not got back to me on this.
Maybe if lots of people send them an email( i went onto the news section, then 'your comments') they may be inclined to add talkcyprus to their list.

city · Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 3369 Location: Larnaca area

erolz wrote: ....
http://www.talkcyprus.org/searchrankmsn.htm

Our best placing atm is searching on MSN on the term "cyprus chat forum" where we come 17th in the list of sites and appear on the second page.

Hi Erol, I'm a bit suspicious about these results to be honest. (or maybe I'm reading ýour statistics wrongly)
Why does it say "no pages found" for the term cyprus forum ? Shouldn't it find lots of results???

detailer · Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 473 Location: UK

When you search "cyprus forum" in google,
this one appears in the bootom of the page:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 3 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Do you have an idea?

erolz · Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 4195 Location: Kyrenia / Girne

city wrote: Hi Erol, I'm a bit suspicious about these results to be honest. (or maybe I'm reading ýour statistics wrongly)
Why does it say "no pages found" for the term cyprus forum ? Shouldn't it find lots of results???

It means that this site is not returned on that seartch term in the first 150 matches that google does return, not that google finds no matches. However this is not as bad as it sounds as we are not yet 'in' google apart from a single 'placeholde' entry. Google is actually the slowest of all the search engines in terms of the time between submitting a URL to it actually appearing (properly) on the google site. Give it some time.

city · Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 3369 Location: Larnaca area

erolz wrote: city wrote: Hi Erol, I'm a bit suspicious about these results to be honest. (or maybe I'm reading ýour statistics wrongly)
Why does it say "no pages found" for the term cyprus forum ? Shouldn't it find lots of results???

It means that this site is not returned on that seartch term in the first 150 matches that google does return, not that google finds no matches. However this is not as bad as it sounds as we are not yet 'in' google apart from a single 'placeholde' entry. Google is actually the slowest of all the search engines in terms of the time between submitting a URL to it actually appearing (properly) on the google site. Give it some time.

erm, thats not what I meant. My question was: Why doesn't msn find any entries on the term cyprus forum? The "old CF" should be listed. NO?
I tried this term on Google and MSN and millions of results showed.

city · Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 3369 Location: Larnaca area

detailer wrote: When you search "cyprus forum" in google,
this one appears in the bootom of the page:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 3 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Do you have an idea?

I have no idea, but when you click on that link "read the DMCA complaint" its dead..... :-(