1. Characterizing the KYV Tool
The KYV tool objective is to give the user information about web
positioning of his/her website domains. This process could not be in
real time because it is necessary to ask the various search engines for
different values several times, in order to calculate the visibility
indicators and prepare the rankings.
The application thus stores and
processes the website throughout the period of time that is necessary.
As well as giving information on visibility, the application offers some
activities that could be applied in the quest to improve that website
visibility.
Finally, the tool stores statistical information about the websites
analyzed, so as to be able to develop visibility rankings by topics.
The main functionality of KYV is, then, to allow users to introduce an
url and, after a period of time the tool generates a
report about the main figures of the web site, proposing corrective
maintenance actions to improve positioning, if necessary.
2. The KYV Tool Architecture
The application is divided into two sub-applications (see figure): one
of them is a web Application in ASP.NET and the other is a windows
application in C#. Both sub-applications share the same database.
The website application provides an interface
between users and the database. Users can register and introduce
domains for their visibility evaluation.
When a new domain is introduced, the webmaster decides if it is
appropriate for evaluation. This decision is then communicated to the
user by e-mail.
The windows application is in charge of performing the measurements
of the web site and of sending out monthly queries to the most
important search engines, with the aim of carrying out the visibility
analysis of the websites (those previously accepted by the webmaster).
Once the calculations are performed, the user is contacted again, (via
another e-mail) inviting him/her to visit the KYV tool again in order to
recover the results.
Apart from the above tasks, the windows application is expected to
work out every ranking that is created. The corresponding information
is shown to the registered users by the website application.
3. How to determine the visibility
The KYV application is expected to perform queries in order to calculate some visibility measures to the
most important search engines and analyze the results, usually in text format, in order to obtain the
requested values. KYV will perform measurements for the following variables or parameters:
-
Documents or Pages Indexed (SITE).
It is very important to know the number of pages that the main search engines have indexed for our domain.
Knowing this value is a critic point since not indexed pages will never appear as a result in a search engine.
The calculations for this variable are performed in Google, Yahoo! and Msn(Live) Search.
-
Links to the domain (LINKS).
The links to the domain represent the number of recommendations that this domain receives as a link.
This value is a measurement of how the domain and its contents are well-known in Internet.
KYV considers only extern links, being excluded those links established from the domain itself (auto-links.)
This indicator is computed in Yahoo! and Msn.
-
Alexa Traffic Rank (POPULAR).
The domain popularity tries to determine how the domain is well-known for users. Obviously, the best
way to calculate popularity is to analyze the database of users that the domain receives. However, this
information is not available in Search Engines. Alexa.com provides an approximation (the traffic rank)
based on the information obtained from the users that have installed its navigation bar. A website
traffic rank indicates both the number of users that visit the website and the number of pages visited
by these users. The smaller the better since this is a global ranking that varies between 1 and several
millions.
-
Rich Files Indexed (PDF SITE).
All those files that users can download, read or print without be connected to the Internet are considered
rich files. Pdf files are the most popular. However, rich files are only applicable to some domains
categories, for example Universities. They are not usual in other areas like Banks or Museums. For this
reason this variable is not used for the ranking elaboration. Calculations are performed in Google, Yahoo! and Msn.
-
Page Rank of Google (PR).
Search Engines include mechanisms in order to value the importance of a website. Google includes a public
index for pages importance, the Page Rank (PR), that is based, among others, in the number of links
received from other pages and the ranking (PR) of these pages. Using this variable, it is possible to
know the relative importance that Google assign to each domain. PR is not applicable in the creation of
rankings because it usually assigns similar scores to topic related domains.
4. Rankings calculation
KYV considers only the SITE,
LINKS and POPULARITY variables in the
development of rankings. Each ranking (see next figure) will be produced
by grouping queries first of all (Google site), then by grouping
indicators (Site), and finally by giving a single evaluation to each
domain and ranking.
With the obtained values, a weighted formula invisible to users will be applied. At the end,
an ordered classification in which the global position for each domain and parameter will be
obtained. Users must take into account that these rankings have a subjective part, due to the
fact that the parameters are weighted. Hence different users with different experience can weight
the parameters in a different manner. The one KYV used by has been determined by our own
experience and, under our point of view, has worked in the web sites to which we have applied it.