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You can actually help our internet rating

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Posted by: Shawn

Below is a copy of the private message that I sent out to all of our 'power' users, more than 100 posts.
It has become almost a daily battle to stay on top of the search engines, and I finally found a way for our members to actually help us out.
For still undetermined reasons, it seems that many of the search engines are biased in how they are rating websites, especially anything to do with prayer.
After speaking to many programming buddies whose sites are ranked considerably higher than ours we came to a conclusion that will help our website out.
Most every search engine has toolbars that can be added to internet explorer which actually track the traffic of websites. This is actually great news, but traditionally hurts websites like ours, as most of our visitors are not into the tech side of the net and do not have such toolbars. Well that's about to change, as I'm agressivelly trying to introduce these to our members.
There are currently no christian websites ranked in the top 1% of websites on the internet, and with your help we can actually break that trend. It's about time that christian websites really make their presence known to these engines, and below you can find out how to help us achieve that.

Please read the following:
I came across a really great resource today that will not only help our website ratings,but also adds some really neat features for you as well.
It is a toolbar for internet explorer from http://www.alexa.com
Basically it will add built in search features, popup blockers, website information, and an email to friend ability to IE for you.

Alexa is one of the internets largest rating services for websites, and untill recently I even wasn't aware of it.
They currently have our website ranked at 218,670 which is obviously not right for a site this size. I did a lot of research and found friends websites where I personally know they don't generate 10% of our traffic, yet they were ranked higher.
It turns out that these sites, mostly computer related tech sites, have a userbase that is used to using toolbars like alexa so their ratings are skewed.

You can download the free toolbar from:
http://download.alexa.com/alexa7/st...=Dest_W_b_40_T1

I am going to pass this message along to a number of our 'power' users at anointed and see if at least for the next 3 months if our stats don't jump through the roof with them.
Please let me know if this is something that you are going to install, so I can try and keep track of approx how many of our members are using it, and measure that against our ratings increase.

thank you and the Lord bless you
shawn

p.s.
After further reading about the toolbar I found some more important information
The toolbar tracks 2 things.
1. How many unique people visit the website each day
2. How many DIFFERENT pages on the website that a person clicks on.
That means if you goto the prayer board homepage 10x it only counts as 1 click.
This should not be much of a problem as most of our users click on at least a dozen different prayer threads each visit. My goal is to avg between 15-20 diff pages per user clicks.
It's kinda cool and like a bonus for sites like anointed where people surf around a lot, and don't just visit and leave, so feel free to surf as many pages on each visit as you are able to. Not only are you able to answer more people's prayer requests, but you are also able to help the rankings by doing so.

I was asked a question about removing the toolbar at a later time and I ran 2 tests which worked perfectly.
This is NOT one of those toolbars that just won't go away. If you do decide at a later date to remove it, the process is very easy and takes only a few seconds.


Posted by: akabezalel

Hi Shawn!

I downloaded the Alexa last night and I hope it does some good keeping the site up in ratings.




Posted by: StarChilde

This may sound like a stupid question, yet I have been told the only stupid question is one not asked... When I visit anointed.net, as time & circumstances allow... I generally keep open the top 100 prayer requests of the day, then open each prayer in a new browser window... every so often I refresh the home page to survey new prayer requests... so each time I would open a new browser to look at prayers would be considered a "hit"?

I ask because I generally stick to toolbars I have used & am familiar with.I use Google's pretty regularly for searches, so their toolbar comes in pretty handy. I will check out the Alexa toolbar & see what it all entails.

Thanks for the tip Shawn, will let you know if I install it.


Posted by: Shawn

Quote:
Originally Posted by StarChilde
This may sound like a stupid question, yet I have been told the only stupid question is one not asked... When I visit anointed.net, as time & circumstances allow... I generally keep open the top 100 prayer requests of the day, then open each prayer in a new browser window... every so often I refresh the home page to survey new prayer requests... so each time I would open a new browser to look at prayers would be considered a "hit"?

I ask because I generally stick to toolbars I have used & am familiar with.I use Google's pretty regularly for searches, so their toolbar comes in pretty handy. I will check out the Alexa toolbar & see what it all entails.

Thanks for the tip Shawn, will let you know if I install it.

Yes, each time you click on anything new it is considered a hit. Really nothing changes from what a person without the bar would be used to.
b.t.w. it also has google search built into the bar, which is kinda cool.


Posted by: Shawn

Thank you to everyone who has sent me a private message letting me know that you are helping out with this. The results are allready amazing, and I'm looking forward to seeing just how far we can get.
Just imagine the glory for the Lord to have a christian website ranked that high up there.

thanks again


Posted by: MaryTemp

Alexa is really awesome!!! I just got it downloaded this morning, and I really do like it. There are quite a bit of really awesome features!!! Thanks again for telling me about it....I hope it helps the ratings like you want it to!!! By the way I also left a review of annointed net on the link there, I don't know if it is published yet or not.

Warm Regards,
Mary


Posted by: Shawn

A HUGE thank you to all of our members who are helping us out with this project.
The results are allready amazing, and we've only just begun.
Below is a chart showing what just a one day difference can make, and this is with only 20 or so members participating. I know the Lord has huge plans for this and that as time goes on many more members will jump on board with us.
The chart shows our overall web ranking where being number 1 is the most visited site on the internet. Our goal for the Lord is to make it to the top 1,000 sites.


Today1 Wk. Avg3 Mos. Avg3 Mos. Change
18,58280,325216,050+39,817

As you can see, it's a HUGE jump allready. As we continue we will bring so much glory to the Lord that I can't hardly stand it.
Thank you all again, and the Lord bless you dearly.


Posted by: ANOINTED WARRIOR

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn
A HUGE thank you to all of our members who are helping us out with this project.
The results are allready amazing, and we've only just begun.
Below is a chart showing what just a one day difference can make, and this is with only 20 or so members participating. I know the Lord has huge plans for this and that as time goes on many more members will jump on board with us.
The chart shows our overall web ranking where being number 1 is the most visited site on the internet. Our goal for the Lord is to make it to the top 1,000 sites.


Today1 Wk. Avg3 Mos. Avg3 Mos. Change
18,58280,325216,050+39,817

As you can see, it's a HUGE jump allready. As we continue we will bring so much glory to the Lord that I can't hardly stand it.
Thank you all again, and the Lord bless you dearly.

Is there anyway I can see how many hits this site takes in a day from the tool bar I have installed


Posted by: StarChilde

I have installed Alexa & will use it for when I access anointed.net. I plan on turning it off otherwise, but I did want to help the ratings out. It looks like each time you open it, the bar comes on... will have to check more on that feature.
I like google toolbar just because you can do specific and advanced searches on it, like for images, which I use practically daily.


Posted by: StarChilde

Quote:
Originally Posted by ANOINTED WARRIOR
Is there anyway I can see how many hits this site takes in a day from the tool bar I have installed

Chris-- click on the info button on the toolbar, it will give you more info like you want to see. God bless.


Posted by: Shawn

Wow, even with all the downtime due to the server upgrades, our ratings continue to increase.
IT'S WORKING!!!

Today1 Wk. Avg3 Mos. Avg3 Mos. Change
8,7379,494153,873+150,999


Its very exciting to see the weekly stats in the 10k range allready, and I'm sure this is only the beginning. Thank you again to everyone who is participating and helping us out with this. We still need to approx triple the number of members using the bar in order to make the "movers and shakers" page but I'm sure that will happen soon. Now that does not mean to go and ask everyone to use the bar, as the number of pageviews each person views each day makes a huge difference. So far, by only having our "power" members using the bar, our page views avg has gone from the 13 avg up to about 47 pages per user.
I always knew that our members looked at many more than 13 pages a day, and it's finally showing up.

the Lord bless you all for helping
shawn


Posted by: Donna C

Dear Shawn

By 'trade' I am an Oracle database administrator, if there is anything that I can do to help please shout. I will be only too glad to help.

Donna C


Posted by: czynka

Fantastic news !!!



Hold on Lord, we're taking You to the TOP !!!!


Posted by: Shawn

Quote:
Originally Posted by Donna C
Dear Shawn

By 'trade' I am an Oracle database administrator, if there is anything that I can do to help please shout. I will be only too glad to help.

Donna C


you have a private message waiting:


Posted by: faith rising

Shawn,

I replied to your PM. I haven't really done enough research on Alexa, but I have heard that it operates with a "backdoor" system that installs spyware onto the users computer that installs parasites that track the sites the user visits and reports the information back to it's parent company which gives them access to personal information such as passwords and other vital personal information. These parasites generate pop-ups, and can eventually crash your hard drive. Like I said, I haven't done enough research myself, and I could be very wrong. I truly hope I am wrong. I know that you would never do anything to cause us harm. Was I misinformed about Alexa? Please, Please tell me that I am wrong! I have been known to be wrong before, and I hope this is one of these times!


Posted by: Shawn

Quote:
Originally Posted by faith rising
Shawn,

I replied to your PM. I haven't really done enough research on Alexa, but I have heard that it operates with a "backdoor" system that installs spyware onto the users computer that installs parasites that track the sites the user visits and reports the information back to it's parent company which gives them access to personal information such as passwords and other vital personal information. These parasites generate pop-ups, and can eventually crash your hard drive. Like I said, I haven't done enough research myself, and I could be very wrong. I truly hope I am wrong. I know that you would never do anything to cause us harm. Was I misinformed about Alexa? Please, Please tell me that I am wrong! I have been known to be wrong before, and I hope this is one of these times!

I've read everything I can find about Alexa and even spoke to them last week about their toolbar.
They DO NOT install any backdoor spyware or parasites, at least according to what I have read and what they told me. I have been using the bar on all of my computers for the past 2 weeks and have never received even one popup that i didn't actually allow to popup.
As to capturing information, when you are on a secure site, the bar turns itself off automatically. Yes the bar does track where you goto, that is kind of the entire point to the toolbar. They use that information to say person "x" went to website "a" and clicked on "x" number of pages. They do not capture any of the actual "data input" boxes that you fill in when on a site, just the url and time you were there.
During the signup process, they do not ask for your name or personally identifying information. Their main concern is not who, but how many people goto the websites in order to rank their importance on the web.
As they are directly connected to amazon.com website, at least for me personally, I chose to trust that what they were doing was above board. As I described to an earlier person in a pm what they are tracking is actually less than any isp in the country now. Due to our new homeland security act, all isp's are required to track every single thing you do on the internet. They keep records of every incoming and outgoing email, every webpage, every graphic, etc.. that you ever goto on the internet. And the worst part, is there is no required court order in order to get your information. It's actually scary to me, but it's now a fact of life. There are so few companies doing actuall "good" with this information, and I am terribly impressed at how much work alexa has put into tracking website performance over the years.
Here is a huge part as to why we are going this route. There is very disturbing trends going on right now with the search engines on the internet. It is now getting to the point that if you cannot afford to spend literally thousands of dollars a year, your website will not even be spidered or show up in the search engines.
Take yahoo for example, just bought out by msn.
There is no page anywhere for a person to submit their website to be spidered anymore. They have gone to a plan where it would cost us $49 for the initial spider, something like 10c a page after that, so spidering our site would cost thousands. And even worse, in order to stay listed, you have to pay anywhere from 5c-20c a click forever. That means if you find our site on yahoo, and click the lik, we get charged. Now thank the Lord that we're kind of "grandfathered" in, but it's still pretty bad.
I am sure that google, and the others are right behind them.

what does this mean?
If you are not a large corporation with a budget for the search engines, your website cannot be found. It's like business censorship. This will mean the ultimate demise of almost every small christian website on the internet.
So why alexa?
They are approx 3x the size of google, making them the largest index of websites on the entire internet. They have published no plans whatsoever on charging to be listed. If all the other engines goto a pay for index plan only, then they may end up becoming the search engine of choice.
Yes they do track me, but I never visit sites that I wouldn't want even my mother to know about. In other words I'm not hiding anything. At least for now, I trust their business practices with amazon. For me personally, it is worth letting them know what pages I goto in order to try and finally get a christian website up where it belongs.
I hope this helped to answer your questions.


Posted by: Shawn

The great stats continue.
Thankyou to everyone helping out.

Today1 Wk. Avg3 Mos. Avg3 Mos. Change
7,1009,17974,078+159,021


Notice our 3 month avg has allready dropped from our initial ranking of 216,050 all the way down to 74,078. That is a HUGE drop which is very good news.
We have not yet made the movers and shakers page, though it seems that our stat changes are more dramatic than some of the sites listed. I'll continue to pray as to why they are not showing us on the list. At this point, my best guess is that our "reach" or number of users with the bar isn't high enough yet, but that is not confirmed yet.


Posted by: StarChilde

I wanted to say a word about Alexa. I also was apprehensive about installing it due to some things I had heard, and read. I decided to give it a try... I like the options that it can be turned off..altho I do not go places where I shouldn't be on the net... my isp tracking everywhere I go is enough for me heheh... even though it is sad that it has to be that way...I have ran spyware detectors on my pc since having Alexa, and everything is kosher with it. I basically use Alexa to browse Christian sites, mostly anointed.net, otherwise I turn it off.
I use another toolbar, which blocks pop-ups first, but I know Alexa has that option... what I like most about Alexa...is it helps bring up the ratings for anointed.net & the other Christian sites I visit. These are the sites which should be high in the ratings... these are the ones that bring God the glory! These are the sites that say WE CHRISTIANS ARE ALIVE AND WE ALSO HAVE A VOICE!


Posted by: faith rising

Shawn

Thank you or clarifying that!


Posted by: Shawn

A huge thank you again to all those helping out.
Our stats continue to get better and better each and every day.
We've pretty much peaked in the area of 8-11k ranking for now, but that will change as more and more people begin to find us that use the toolbar.
Having been only a few weeks we have allready skyrocketed about 200k in our site rankings on the 3 month avg.

Today1 Wk. Avg3 Mos. Avg3 Mos. Change
6,8559,17852,803+167,425


As you can see the 3month avg is now down to 52,803 and we're dropping about 20k slots a week. All I can really say is, Praise the Lord, He is so good to us. I'll keep posting updates when the stats make huge changes for us to let everyone know how successfull this has become.


Posted by: KingdomWarrior

How can I get it?? Also, is it a browser or is it a toolbar??


Posted by: Shawn

Quote:
Originally Posted by KingdomWarrior
How can I get it?? Also, is it a browser or is it a toolbar??

You can get the toolbar from www.alexa.com it is located on the top bar where it says "free toolbar" It is not a browser but a toolbar for internet explorer that is added automatically.


Posted by: KingdomWarrior

Shaun - I tried to download it, but I can't. One error after another comes up. I have tried for 2 days to get it.

I have edited my security settings and everything. I have them on the lowest possible settings, took my firewall down, etc. Even unhooked the network (my computer and my mother's are connected.)

I can't figure out why it won't work.


Posted by: jmmcalvain

Quote:
Originally Posted by KingdomWarrior
Shaun - I tried to download it, but I can't. One error after another comes up. I have tried for 2 days to get it.

I have edited my security settings and everything. I have them on the lowest possible settings, took my firewall down, etc. Even unhooked the network (my computer and my mother's are connected.)

I can't figure out why it won't work.


Hi there,
This Jacqueline Maree McAlvain, coming on board to join the corp of prayer warriors.
Please let me know of any specific concerns.
Yours, In Christ, Jmm


Posted by: KingdomWarrior

I got it now - It doesn't work with Avant Browser, only with IE. Which is confussing to me, as everything else with IE works with Avant.


Posted by: Shawn

Quote:
Originally Posted by KingdomWarrior
I got it now - It doesn't work with Avant Browser, only with IE. Which is confussing to me, as everything else with IE works with Avant.

yeah, that's weird that it does not work with other browsers, especially considering that the parent company is amazon,which has plenty of money to spend on development. Who knows, maybe someday they will come up with a universal vs. for all browser types. For me, even though I love mozilla browser, I end up spending most of my time using IE as that's what 95% of our members use. That way I can see exactly what they are seeing and make needed changes accordingly. The results I have seen so far from the bar are amazing though. As far as I can tell, we only have about 7-8 people using the browser bar that visit our site on a daily basis, but even with that few people, our rankings are now avg around the 10k mark. That is great news, and it's allready making it easier to find our website in the search engines. They tend to give much higher priority ranking to those sites with good rankings, and we're getting there. Not only our site, but a number of other christian websites that I am also helping out with. It's going to be really neat to see a few christian websites hitting the top numbers this summer and beyond.


Posted by: KingdomWarrior

Avant is based on IE and when I do site developement I use Avant and see no difference. The only thing with Avant is that it allows multiple windows in one brower and it blocks pop-ups, flash, and graphics (if you turn it off.)

I am so glad to see this site getting better ratings with so few people using it.

Shaun - just a suggestion - Can you make an announcement banner on the top of the board for this (or a global announcement/sticky). Some people may not go to this forum to see this. It might increase the number of people who will download the toolbar.


Posted by: akabezalel

ALERT!!! ALERT!!!

Our Ratings are SLIPPING!!!

We need to bring them back under 10,000! At the very least!

We would have to beat Yahoo for the number 1 position but we can get a whole lot CLOSER than 14,034!!!


Posted by: akabezalel

Shawn! I have a question!

I was looking at the site stats:

Traffic Rank for annointed.net: 14,034 (4,804)

Speed: Very Slow (96% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 6.3 Seconds (what's this?)

Other sites that link to this site: 17

Popups: Many (26% of sessions have popups)

I was wondering... WHAT Popups?

In all my time on this board I have never seen a popup!?!

Except maybe the one that tells me I type too fast in the chat room

but even that one cannot happen to 26% of all sessions! The chat room isn't that busy!


Posted by: Shawn

thanks for the info:
I was aware of the stats, and cannot figure out why they say we have popups when we do not. As to the speed... well I'd even dispute that, but then again we do have a very "heavy" homepage with lots of pictures.
I'm still hopeing that as time goes on we'll crack the top 1000 sites. We just need about 100 or so more people using the bar.