Freelance Web Development

I received a nice treat in the mail recently. A Happy-Winter-Solstice card from Google? Sorta. The envelope was somewhat big and said Congratulations on it. I would have tossed it if it was not from Google. I opened it and, lo and behold, it’s a window sticker stating I’m a Favorite Place on Google. How cool! And I’ve never even heard of that.

So I quickly stuck that bad boy sticker in my ‘office’ window. Keep in mind that I work from home. There was a board meeting the next morning, and the outcome was the sticker came down very shortly thereafter. I think it was up for maybe 8 hours at best that night. =)

What am I Favorite Place for? Why, “web development“, of course!

Apparently local businesses are supposed to put this sticker in their window. Then yuppies snap pics of the barcode with their cell toys to get instant information about the business. I donno… why not just go in and say hi?

Less than 1% of businesses get these. So I’m pretty psyched. The other board members are… bored members.

The list was determined based on the popularity of a business’ Local Business Center listing, as determined by how many times Google users looked for more information about a business, requested driving directions to get there, and more. Google users “decided” based on their actions, and we sent the decals.

Over 100,000 businesses were identified as Favorite Places, representing less than 1% of the 28 million U.S. businesses. We believe that our standards for selecting businesses are as selective or more selective than other companies which have run similar initiatives.

http://www.google.com/help/maps/favoriteplaces/business/faq.html

News, WebVeteran Favorite Place, Google, Search Engine Optimization, seo

Using ColdFusion I look for the referring web page that sent a viewer to my site. Then I split that traffic up into two categories: 1) Searches 2) Links. If a similar search term was seen before, I incriment it’s weight. Same goes for domains of links. The result is a Referer cloud, very similar in look to a Tag Cloud:

But I find this MUCH more interested than a tag cloud…
This shows me what terms people are searching for in order to find me. Also lets me know who is linking to me (if the link was clicked on). I find it REALLY damn intersting and fun to watch. And since it’s sorted by the last hit time descending, I get up to the instant information.

Look at how weighted ‘php reference pdf’ is… and I only have two pages on my site that mention php. It just goes to show you how popular php is, and the need for the decent PDF reference that I posted.

And notice how many of those search term referrals are from Google (mouse over the terms for info). It shows how dominant they really are.

Comparison

I did a little poking around online and found other search/referer clouds. But they didn’t split the search terms out. And they counted www.domain.com as sepearate from domain.com, whereas my program knows to combine them as domain.com.

I’ve looked at the source code of other referer cloud programs… they are up in 300 lines of code, and use server log files (not real time). My program is only 150 lines of code and uses real time cgi variables and a MySQL database.

Others: Google only. Mine: All search engines.

Less code, more functionality, better performance. =)

ColdFusion, MySQL, Web Coding Google, Search Engine Optimization, Tag Cloud, Yahoo

I was worried of the new site launch, hearing stories of site falling off of search engines because of the new navigation. Pages have move. To a spider, the page disappeared. And a new page exists. Therefore any benefit of that file over time is lost. So I made some provisions to my site to overcome this obstacle. And so far so good, webveteran.com is doing so much better than it ever has – in all major search engines.

Results

Using Advanced Web Ranking, I compared the night of the launch with the next days. The site went live on the February 18 2007. Here is the comparison to the February 21 2007.

      Advanced Web Ranking Report
           Project: MyProject
 Feb 21, 2007 (Compare to Feb 18, 2007)

freelance web development                  www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (12,400,000)                1        1       -    1
AlltheWeb (12,400,000)                -        1       x    -
Altavista (12,700,000)                1        1       -    1
AOL                                  25       33      +8    3
Google (5,940,000)                   25       33      +8    3
MSN (380,145)                         2        2       -    1
Search                                6        6       -    1
Yahoo                                 1        1       -    1

freelance web developer                    www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (5,070,000)                 2        2       -    1
Altavista (5,260,000)                 2        2       -    1
AOL                                  32        -       +    4
Google (571,000)                     32        -       +    4
MSN (207,852)                         -        -       ?    -
Search                                -        -       ?    -
Yahoo                                 2        2       -    1

freelance programming services             www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (3,400,000)                 2        2       -    1
Altavista (3,660,000)                 2        2       -    1
AOL                                   -        -       ?    -
Google (111,000)                      -        -       ?    -
MSN (191,352)                        34       35      +1    4
Search                                -        -       ?    -
Yahoo                                 2        2       -    1

freelance coldfusion programmer            www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (138,000)                  10       12      +2    1
AlltheWeb (138,000)                   -       12       x    -
Altavista (145,000)                  10       12      +2    1
AOL                                   -        -       ?    -
Google (14,200)                       -        -       ?    -
MSN (10,955)                          -        -       ?    -
Search                                -        -       ?    -
Yahoo                                 9       10      +1    1

freelance coldfusion                       www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (540,000)                   3        -       +    1
Altavista (553,000)                   3        -       +    1
AOL                                   9        -       +    1
Google (70,800)                       9        -       +    1
MSN (59,163)                         12        -       +    2
MSN (59,163)                         13        -       +    2
Search                                5        -       +    1
Yahoo                                 3        -       +    1

coldfusion freelance                       www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (540,000)                   1       14     +13    1
Altavista (553,000)                   1       14     +13    1
AOL                                  12       13      +1    2
Google (72,400)                      12       13      +1    2
MSN (59,815)                          8        8       -    1
Search                               22       22       -    3
Yahoo                                 1       12     +11    1

web2 demos                                 www.webveteran.com

Search Engine                  Position Previous  Change Page
AlltheWeb (482,000)                   -        -       ?    -
Altavista (548,000)                   -        -       ?    -
AOL                                   9        8      -1    1
Google (95,700)                       9        8      -1    1
MSN (29,631)                          1        1       -    1
Search                                2        2       -    1
Yahoo                                 -        -       ?    -

Lots of green plus signs in there =)
If you see a plus with no number, it means I didn’t exist for that search before. This is great.

Web Coding Google, Search Engine Optimization, Yahoo