[OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
I'd love to see a cite for 80% of web traffic comes from search engines. I've worked on plenty of high-traffic public websites in my day, and have never, ever found that to be the case. If anything, more traffic comes from portals such as Yahoo, AOL, and MSN than anywhere else, and by that I mean direct links from the main page, which cost money. People don't get to nike.com by typing shoes in a search engine. Shoes on Google gets Vegetarian Shoes as the first link. Yeah, that's relevant. In my experience, search engine placement as a priority is the technique used by sites that don't have any money and want traffic for free. Keep in mind that traffic != sales, and traffic != revenue. They're not even directly proportional. How you drive traffic depends on the target audience. Sometimes its a search engine, I would say search engines are the last place people look when they want to spend money. Search engines are used, in my opinion, by people looking for information or anything else that's free, not for someplace to spend money. CDs at Google doesn't get me Amazon, yet that's the first place I go when I want to buy a CD from a major artist. Even a specific artist like Eminem CD doesn't get me Amazon anywhere near the top of the results. For us, our Tomcat-based commercial applications are sold face-to-face by salespeople. John -Original Message- From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 6:54 AM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat I'm not presuming its priority #1 always, but yes I am presuming it is a very high priority ... but ... 80% of web traffic comes from search engines. Unless you're one you've got a major print and media advertising budget how else do you drive traffic? I suppose there are other possible scenarios such as Intranets or B2B apps, but I would suspect SEO is a significant factor for most who would deploy a commercial web application. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
You're comparing apples and oranges .. and pears (staying with the analogies ;-)). A high profile site of course does not need the engines to the same extent as a small site. Additionally, a small site with a mature link base (100s or 1000s of grade A links) will not recieve as much traffic from them either. For a new site (first year or so) its just the opposite. Besides, I was including places like Yahoo!, AOL, when I refer to search engine. Granted these are CPCs (fake search engines) but nonetheless google probably has 80% of the search engine market ... as for the 80% of traffic coming from search engines - its a statistic I recently read in a book. I can look it up for you if interested. If sounds though like the truth of this statistic has a lot to do with whether you're comparing apples ... oranges ... or pears. As for switching to Apache with 1hr work ... I'm also bucking that just because (a) my ISP will want to get involved and charge me hourly for the setup of an addt'l app and (b) I will have to get another $300 SSL cert from Trawte if I go that road. Sigh. Neal -Original Message- From: Turner, John [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 5:34 AM To: 'Tomcat Users List' Subject: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat I'd love to see a cite for 80% of web traffic comes from search engines. I've worked on plenty of high-traffic public websites in my day, and have never, ever found that to be the case. If anything, more traffic comes from portals such as Yahoo, AOL, and MSN than anywhere else, and by that I mean direct links from the main page, which cost money. People don't get to nike.com by typing shoes in a search engine. Shoes on Google gets Vegetarian Shoes as the first link. Yeah, that's relevant. In my experience, search engine placement as a priority is the technique used by sites that don't have any money and want traffic for free. Keep in mind that traffic != sales, and traffic != revenue. They're not even directly proportional. How you drive traffic depends on the target audience. Sometimes its a search engine, I would say search engines are the last place people look when they want to spend money. Search engines are used, in my opinion, by people looking for information or anything else that's free, not for someplace to spend money. CDs at Google doesn't get me Amazon, yet that's the first place I go when I want to buy a CD from a major artist. Even a specific artist like Eminem CD doesn't get me Amazon anywhere near the top of the results. For us, our Tomcat-based commercial applications are sold face-to-face by salespeople. John -Original Message- From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 6:54 AM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat I'm not presuming its priority #1 always, but yes I am presuming it is a very high priority ... but ... 80% of web traffic comes from search engines. Unless you're one you've got a major print and media advertising budget how else do you drive traffic? I suppose there are other possible scenarios such as Intranets or B2B apps, but I would suspect SEO is a significant factor for most who would deploy a commercial web application. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
If the site has real value, the customers will find it all by themselves. John -Original Message- From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 1:03 PM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat You're comparing apples and oranges .. and pears (staying with the analogies ;-)). A high profile site of course does not need the engines to the same extent as a small site. Additionally, a small site with a mature link base (100s or 1000s of grade A links) will not recieve as much traffic from them either. For a new site (first year or so) its just the opposite. Besides, I was including places like Yahoo!, AOL, when I refer to search engine. Granted these are CPCs (fake search engines) but nonetheless google probably has 80% of the search engine market ... as for the 80% of traffic coming from search engines - its a statistic I recently read in a book. I can look it up for you if interested. If sounds though like the truth of this statistic has a lot to do with whether you're comparing apples ... oranges ... or pears. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
Oh C'mon! How?!?!?! Telepathy? ;-) I know that there are other means such as word of mouth and as Craig said there's probably not a way to verify these numbers anyway ... besides I'm just quoting what I read. But whether you agree with the 80% number or not I would think surely the outrageous fees charged by competent SEOs is proof enough of their significance. On the Google lists I participate in, its commonly acknowledged that getting dropped from Google can break the back of many internet businesses. -Original Message- From: Turner, John [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:17 AM To: 'Tomcat Users List' Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat If the site has real value, the customers will find it all by themselves. John -Original Message- From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 1:03 PM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat You're comparing apples and oranges .. and pears (staying with the analogies ;-)). A high profile site of course does not need the engines to the same extent as a small site. Additionally, a small site with a mature link base (100s or 1000s of grade A links) will not recieve as much traffic from them either. For a new site (first year or so) its just the opposite. Besides, I was including places like Yahoo!, AOL, when I refer to search engine. Granted these are CPCs (fake search engines) but nonetheless google probably has 80% of the search engine market ... as for the 80% of traffic coming from search engines - its a statistic I recently read in a book. I can look it up for you if interested. If sounds though like the truth of this statistic has a lot to do with whether you're comparing apples ... oranges ... or pears. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
Is that right? The key we generated for Tomcat will also work on Apache?!?! This is surpising (though a plesant suprise) because the method by which we had to create the key for tomcat was different than what the admin had apparently done prior with Apache. -Original Message- From: Noel J. Bergman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:43 AM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat (a) my ISP will want to get involved and charge me hourly for the setup of an addt'l app This is hosted on their server, and they don't have apache installed? Who is the hosting service? (b) I will have to get another $300 SSL cert from Trawte Why? The domain name isn't changing, and both Apache and Tomcat use X.509 certs. What's the issue? --- Noel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
I can only comment on my own experience. I'm assuming that the application wants to earn revenue, and not do so from advertising (ad-only models rarely work). That means sales. I've been purchasing on the net since 1996. Unless the site has a product that no one else on earth and no other site has, the true differentiator (and driver) of success in the long term will be dollar value, user experience, and customer support, not search engine placement. In that scenario, good placement on sites like epinions.com and resellerratings.com, etc. from regular customers is much more valuable. Let's face it, just about any product being sold nowadays, including software, is a commodity item. If it's a high ticket item, then chances are a face-to-face (or several) will be required to get a check, which makes search engine placement just about irrelevant, as a good salesperson working on 100% commission (the good ones always work on 100% commission) will have no problem developing their own leads. If it were me, and I was designing a business model, the last place I would be spending time and resources would be search engine placement, or gyrating an application to enhance search engine placement. ;) But that's me. The search engine placement lists and groups are very similar to the get more traffic lists and groups. I've lurked on both over the years, and I could never get past the idea that in just about every case, it's pretty much just endless discussions about churn. Generic traffic is just the same set of eyeballs over and over, and the traffic brokers you run into will NEVER back up their claims with sales conversion numbers, because they know full well that there is no relationship between the number of people visiting a site and the total amount of sales. They'll claim 10,000 unique visitors to your site this week guaranteed!! but that has no bearing whatsoever on sales. I'd rather focus on making my customers stunned by the value and good customer service I provide. I'll get lots more sales that way over time. John -Original Message- From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:26 PM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat Oh C'mon! How?!?!?! Telepathy? ;-) I know that there are other means such as word of mouth and as Craig said there's probably not a way to verify these numbers anyway ... besides I'm just quoting what I read. But whether you agree with the 80% number or not I would think surely the outrageous fees charged by competent SEOs is proof enough of their significance. On the Google lists I participate in, its commonly acknowledged that getting dropped from Google can break the back of many internet businesses. -Original Message- From: Turner, John [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:17 AM To: 'Tomcat Users List' Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat If the site has real value, the customers will find it all by themselves. John -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
You just have to use, if I remember correctly, the keystore app to export the key and then import it. Whether your ISP knows how to do that is another issue entirely. Heck, you might not even need to do that, you might just be able to point Apache to the appropriate keystore. John -Original Message- From: neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:48 PM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat Is that right? The key we generated for Tomcat will also work on Apache?!?! This is surpising (though a plesant suprise) because the method by which we had to create the key for tomcat was different than what the admin had apparently done prior with Apache. -Original Message- From: Noel J. Bergman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 11:43 AM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat (a) my ISP will want to get involved and charge me hourly for the setup of an addt'l app This is hosted on their server, and they don't have apache installed? Who is the hosting service? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
Hiya Neal (and others) As a counterpoint to your argument about search engines and small sites I have some real numbers: From my website referrer stats: (For an Apache HTTP: http://www.eaves.org) Direct requests : 28% Google.com : 1.5% Google images : 0.7% search.yahoo.com : 0.3% Google.ca : 0.15% Google.co.uk : 0.15% Google.it : 0.11% Google.de : 0.09% Google.com.au : 0.08% Google.co.nz : 0.06% Google.fr : 0.03% Google.pl : 0.03% Google.nl : 0.03% altavista.com : 0.03% au.altavista.com : 0.02% The rest of the traffic is from a whole load of Java MIDlet portals. Total search engines combined: ~4% Now, I'm not running java.sun.com or anything like that but for a personal website I get an average of 30,000 hits a month, and I suspect that the only way that people find my site would be: 1. Signature links in email 2. Search engines It's not like anybody is going to be trying to guess my URL just to see what is there ;-) And the best thing is that I have a site that is just running Tomcat, on a wacky URL to compare this against: (Tomcat: http://www.eaves.org:28080/) Direct requests : 55% looksmart.com : 15% eaves.org : 9% google : 6% search.msn.com : 5% yahoo.com : 1% google.ca : 1% Now, I don't trust these numbers as much because the hits are so much lower 2000 hits a month, but it's clear in my case that there is no, or little penalty for whatever behaviour Tomcat might have. Of course, YMMV, batteries not includes, offer void where prohibited by law. Cheers, -- jon neal wrote: You're comparing apples and oranges .. and pears (staying with the analogies ;-)). A high profile site of course does not need the engines to the same extent as a small site. Additionally, a small site with a mature link base (100s or 1000s of grade A links) will not recieve as much traffic from them either. For a new site (first year or so) its just the opposite. Besides, I was including places like Yahoo!, AOL, when I refer to search engine. Granted these are CPCs (fake search engines) but nonetheless google probably has 80% of the search engine market ... as for the 80% of traffic coming from search engines - its a statistic I recently read in a book. I can look it up for you if interested. If sounds though like the truth of this statistic has a lot to do with whether you're comparing apples ... oranges ... or pears. As for switching to Apache with 1hr work ... I'm also bucking that just because (a) my ISP will want to get involved and charge me hourly for the setup of an addt'l app and (b) I will have to get another $300 SSL cert from Trawte if I go that road. Sigh. Neal -- Jon Eaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eaves.org/jon/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat
Yes but its not that simple. So many factors would play into each individuals site's break down. If you don't focus on them, if you don't optimize for them, and if you have significant other sources of traffic of course that will throw off the thing ... particularly if you have relationships through these midlets. No doubt every site is different but search engines are still the yellow pages of the Internet and with the Internet verging on information overload, ppl are bound to rely even more on central directories are enginesparticularly for new and lesser known sites. If we are to truly contest these numbers we would have to look at sooo many different factors and a rather large cross-section. I hear what you're saying that it is entirely possible to be autonomous from the engines, but many people ... I would venture to say most are not! But I guess that's all speculation unless we care to undertake a dramatic new survey of Internet and search engine usage patterns. ;-) -Original Message- From: Jon Eaves [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:59 PM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: Re: [OFF-TOPIC] RE: RewriteRules and Standalone Tomcat Hiya Neal (and others) As a counterpoint to your argument about search engines and small sites I have some real numbers: From my website referrer stats: (For an Apache HTTP: http://www.eaves.org) Direct requests : 28% Google.com : 1.5% Google images : 0.7% search.yahoo.com : 0.3% Google.ca : 0.15% Google.co.uk : 0.15% Google.it : 0.11% Google.de : 0.09% Google.com.au : 0.08% Google.co.nz : 0.06% Google.fr : 0.03% Google.pl : 0.03% Google.nl : 0.03% altavista.com : 0.03% au.altavista.com : 0.02% The rest of the traffic is from a whole load of Java MIDlet portals. Total search engines combined: ~4% Now, I'm not running java.sun.com or anything like that but for a personal website I get an average of 30,000 hits a month, and I suspect that the only way that people find my site would be: 1. Signature links in email 2. Search engines It's not like anybody is going to be trying to guess my URL just to see what is there ;-) And the best thing is that I have a site that is just running Tomcat, on a wacky URL to compare this against: (Tomcat: http://www.eaves.org:28080/) Direct requests : 55% looksmart.com : 15% eaves.org : 9% google : 6% search.msn.com : 5% yahoo.com : 1% google.ca : 1% Now, I don't trust these numbers as much because the hits are so much lower 2000 hits a month, but it's clear in my case that there is no, or little penalty for whatever behaviour Tomcat might have. Of course, YMMV, batteries not includes, offer void where prohibited by law. Cheers, -- jon neal wrote: You're comparing apples and oranges .. and pears (staying with the analogies ;-)). A high profile site of course does not need the engines to the same extent as a small site. Additionally, a small site with a mature link base (100s or 1000s of grade A links) will not recieve as much traffic from them either. For a new site (first year or so) its just the opposite. Besides, I was including places like Yahoo!, AOL, when I refer to search engine. Granted these are CPCs (fake search engines) but nonetheless google probably has 80% of the search engine market ... as for the 80% of traffic coming from search engines - its a statistic I recently read in a book. I can look it up for you if interested. If sounds though like the truth of this statistic has a lot to do with whether you're comparing apples ... oranges ... or pears. As for switching to Apache with 1hr work ... I'm also bucking that just because (a) my ISP will want to get involved and charge me hourly for the setup of an addt'l app and (b) I will have to get another $300 SSL cert from Trawte if I go that road. Sigh. Neal -- Jon Eaves [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eaves.org/jon/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
