Amsuser.com - #s are up!

[Intrigued]

I am happy to see a strong rebound for 2005 for amsuser.com. I hope a lot of you fellow end-developers (AMS users) have found the archive of projects useful, at least on some level. (many of those projects came from this Website, I just took time to put them all in one place)

FWI, here is an updated screen shot that shows this year's traffic.

[Corey]

I'm going to be getting my design site up soon finally so I'll send you some links but anyhow the major thing is to get your stuff searchable somehow, i.e. using the free Google API or something, that'll triple your traffic. To see the free Google search in action go to our main site and do a search. (lower left) Doesn't take long to setup and you get 1,000 searches per day for free. It'll be a long time before any of us exceed that limit. :yes

[Intrigued]

I'm going to be getting my design site up soon finally so I'll send you some links but anyhow the major thing is to get your stuff searchable somehow, i.e. using the free Google API or something, that'll triple your traffic. To see the free Google search in action go to our main site and do a search. (lower left) Doesn't take long to setup and you get 1,000 searches per day for free. It'll be a long time before any of us exceed that limit. :yes

Ah, thanks Corey for the tip. I had not gotten back to the google API deal-e-o too.

:yes

[Corey]

Does your server have PHP/MySQL?

[Intrigued]

It does... but the SOAP requirement... I am clueless to that platform. However, I did find a link that seems a pretty good HOW-TO for sure, lets see.. I have it here in FAVS, ah yes... http://www.dankarran.com/googleapi-phpsitesearch/

I took a look for a decent link to help me get through it later on when I attack that situation.

Have you used Google API(s) yet?

[Corey]

Yes, that's what we use on our main site here. We used nusoap though, a PHP port of SOAP. See the main thing is to create an index where you can use a convenient form to enter/edit/delete items (along with a short description and a few keywords for each) and then they show up in a searchable table which can be sorted by type, date, size, author, "most popular", etc. It's quite easy to create a system to do that, let me have a look around and see if I can find something free and easy to use.

BTW once you add something like that to your site, all it's contents will show up on Google, so that alone is going to bring in way more traffic, and probably even some people who are not currently using AMS but they get attracted by one of the projects on your site, and so end up trying it out... :yes

[Dermot]

Well this is all new to me but I am very very interested. I really need to attract more visitors / customers to my site. I would be very grateful for anything you can share Corey. :yes

Dermot

[Corey]

OK here's an awesome article on this that'll have you set up with a site search in no time:

http://www.dankarran.com/googleapi-phpsitesearch/

For an example of what that looks like in action just go to http://www.indigorose.com and do a search in the bottom left there...

OK so once you have that added ot your site, Google should automatically parse you but just to make sure, take a few seconds and go type in your URL here:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Now as to whether or not it increases your traffic, that is a balancing game of keywords and page content. For example if you go to Google and type in "Autoplay", check out what happens:
http://www.google.ca/search?biw=1001&hl=en&q=autoplay&meta=

But the same search for "autorun" brings you much different results. Same topic, but wildly different rankings. FWIW We'll be there for autorun soon too now that we own autorun.com as well as autorun.org, just a matte rof time. Anyhow the point is that it's a highly scientific game of words which you can spend all your time on practically, so you have to decide how far you want to take it and read up on "page ranking", etc. accordingly. Best is to learn a bit about Googles page ranking alogrithm if you plan to delve into the dark art of search engine optimization. FWIW it's not "difficult" to get good at search engine stuff but it is time consuming and largley unfun. On the other hand the benefits are massive if you pull it off right. I've never really heard of any companies which did really well on the internet that didn't have at least one person in their ranks who sort of steadily pokes away at the SEO stuff in their spare time, it's a "neccesary evil". :)

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&biw=1001&q=page+rank+algorithm&meta=

P.S. I know a bit about the search engine game FWIW and I'm completely open to you guys, any questions you may have I will be happy to answer. Google also has a zillion pages on search engine stuff which are very good for the most part. It's probably one of the "most discussed" topics on the internet in terms of existing resources. :yes

[Intrigued]

Yes, that's what we use on our main site here. We used nusoap though, a PHP port of SOAP. See the main thing is to create an index where you can use a convenient form to enter/edit/delete items (along with a short description and a few keywords for each) and then they show up in a searchable table which can be sorted by type, date, size, author, "most popular", etc. It's quite easy to create a system to do that, let me have a look around and see if I can find something free and easy to use.

BTW once you add something like that to your site, all it's contents will show up on Google, so that alone is going to bring in way more traffic, and probably even some people who are not currently using AMS but they get attracted by one of the projects on your site, and so end up trying it out... :yes

Right on! I'll have to check this out sooner than later!