Category Archives: Websites

2009 Traffic Statistics

Following on from my 2008 web statistics, below is a summary of what traffic the site took in 2009.

In 2006 the site took about 95,000 visitors, increasing to 145,000 and declining to 135,000 respectively in 2007 and 2008. In 2009 the site took 106,930 visitors over the entire year which resulted in 136,525 pageviews. It’ll come as no surprise that from a traffic driving potential, a lot fewer people are interested in reading about my personal ramblings compared to technical style posts that I used to post.

While last year saw a couple posts catch a moderate amount of attention and punch through the metronomic rise and fall in traffic each day, in 2009 none of my posts really got any traction within the greater internet. Not surprisingly traffic did start to decline towards the end of the year, however I’m happy that it wasn’t obliterated like it was last year when I moved web servers within the same host.

The traffic breakdown, just like in 2008  shows the complete dominance that Google has within the web search market. Yahoo! are still the first non-Google search engine and is still delivering approximately 2.5% of the traffic the they were in 2008. The latest addition to the web search ecosystem is Microsoft’s Bing, which sits at position five. Of course, that isn’t a fair comparison since they haven’t been around for the entire year. If you count Bing, Live and MSN together they drove about 1750 visits for the year putting them in at fourth however by the end of May 2010 I expect Bing to have delivered 2000 visits – narrowing the gap against Yahoo!.

The most popular posts for the year were similar to 2006, 2007 and 2008 but with a few newcomers:

  1. Select Option Disabled & The JavaScript Solution
  2. Disable Options In A Select Dropdown Element
  3. Oracle RETURNING Clause
  4. HP Laserjet & Windows Vista Driver Support
  5. ORA-04030: out of process memory when trying to allocate <x> bytes

Removing those posts from the top of the list since they clearly dominate, changes things a little:

  1. Making HP Laserjet Printers Work In Windows Vista
  2. Oracle Dynamic SQL Using The DECODE Function
  3. ASP Error ‘ASP 0104: 80004005?
  4. ORA-06552: PL/SQL: Compilation Unit Analysis Terminated
  5. Australian Idol 2006 Contestants: The Real Contenders

However still none from 2009 were showing up in the list. Isolating the posts written in 2009 and the landscape is vastly different:

  1. Apple iTunes Store Account Signup Process Needs Work
  2. Windows Vista Business Double Clicking On Single Click
  3. Best Home Phone Plan & Telstra
  4. Apple iTunes Account Verification Has Poor Usability & User Experience
  5. Gold Coast Beach Weddings Are Spectacular

I find it telling that my two gripes about the quality of the Applie iTunes account sign up process are within the list. You’d assume a company with a market capitalisation of nearly USD$200 billion would have such a visible component of their business highly polished but it just goes to show everyone has their problems. Having a home phone plan comparison post residing at position three is just more evidence that the consumer is becoming more savvy by researching online, even when purchasing offline.

Onward and upward for 2010!

Best iPhone Apps According to First & 20

I stumbled onto a neat site today named First & 20, which lets you show people how you have your home screen on your iPhone configured. The neat thing about the site is that it keeps track of how many times different iPhone apps have been used on a home screen, which essentially is like users voting for the best iPhone apps. The site doesn’t put any restriction on what type of application you use on your home screen either, just that you think it warrants being on your home screen, paid or free – it doesn’t matter. While looking through the different configurations I’ve just found a raft of useful iPhone apps that I didn’t even knew existed – so that’ll help me out for sure when I finally get my hands on a new iPhone.

Cheapest Domain Names In Australia

If you’ve ever gone looking to buy an Australian domain name in the past, such as a .com.au, .net.au or even a personal .id.au like this site uses – you’ll have been frustrated by the number of options and the wildly varying prices on offer for a simple domain name.

Previously, I’ve seen domains for Australian businesses range from $15 per 2 years all the way up to hundreds of dollars per year. A lot of domain registers purport to offer the cheapest domain names, however very few actually do and most are inflating the prices quite a bit.

Last year, I came across a very simple but fantastic Australian domain comparison site named What’s In A Name. The site is run by Josh Rowe and compares the retail price of the .auDA accredited domain registrars throughout Australia.

Next time you need to buy cheap domains, check out Whats In A Name to see if the place you’re intending to buy from is selling well over the wholesale price or not.

Offline “Home Business Opportunity” Spam

For the last six months, as I travel around the Gold Coast I keep seeing various bits of advertising at intersections and traffic lights. The advertising is normally stuck or pinned against the light post in the middle of the road, such that the driver can easily see it when stopped at the lights.

When I first came across the advertising, I thought it was very creative. Instead of bothering with professionally printed signs, they were hand written using a wide tipped Nikko – black writing on a plain white plastic cardboard. The sign said something to the effect of ‘executive income from home, phone x or visit y’.

It wasn’t long before I started seeing more and more of these little advertising boards, stuck up at intersections all over the Gold Coast – so one day I thought I might as well check out what they are going on about. Shortly after visiting the site in question, I realise they aren’t selling anything specifically – but are offering business coaching. Sounds like a good idea to me, a little further reading and the business coaching they are offering is based on the magic of the stupidly cult popular “The Secret”. At that point, I began to become disinterested in anything they had to offer; sorry to say it but willing your home business to grow and earn you six and seven figure sums of money isn’t going to happen – no matter how far you put the good vibes out into the world.

Recently, more and more of these types of banners have shown up over the Gold Coast – except now they are varying in style – some printed professionally, some hand written and so on. The web site addresses being promoted are different, however there is a common theme – all pushing the home business opportunity and executive six figure plus income from home.

Further investigation shows that the web sites are strangely similar – the same cookie cutter style sites, but with different people telling you how their home business opportunity will change your world forever. Lots of personal photographs of the person in question around the world, all inferring that it was a derivative of the power of awesome service. That lead me to find out where the cookie cutter sites are coming from, the same business in each case. Throwing their web site address into Google returned huge volumes of results and looking through the URL’s of the sites, you could easily spot a common theme.

Looking into their business further and it would appear there are a lot of unhappy people getting around the internet about them. They are embroiled in a huge scam, how it works I’m not quite sure but I’m guessing it involves duping a client into believing that willing their business to grow through positive thinking and good vibrations will work, all of which can be your for a tidy sum of money.

I’m wondering how many people on the Gold Coast have seen their guerrilla advertising and followed through?