the sephone blog

Last year Facebook raised $100 Million in capital to scale up their service by 50,000 web servers, recent best estimates put their current number of servers at about 30,000 (apparently they haven’t spent all of their money yet) but they are continually scaling up to meet the needs of their growing user base which currently stands at about 109 Million active users.   In comparison Business Week estimates that Google is running in excess of 1 Million servers and Microsoft over 200 thousand.  These are big numbers and it takes a lot of space, bandwidth and power to keep datacenters of these sizes up and running.   Facebook has a population of a decent-sized country, Google by some estimates is responsible for about 16% of consumer bandwidth, and Microsoft…. well Microsoft is gunning for Google with Bing (in the same way the gunned for the iPod with the Zune… but that is the subject of another blog entry).

Let’s think about Google for just a minute.   100 Million servers means web servers, database servers, application servers, file servers; lots of different computers all working together to serve all of Google’s web properties, Search, GMail, YouTube, GoogleDocs,  etcetera, etcetera.  Some fast facts gathered from doing a Google search:  1.  Google claims it takes 1 kJ of energy to answer a typical search query.  2. Their data center in The Dalles, Oregon uses enough energy to power Tacoma, Washington  3.  Google’s estimated monthly bandwidth usage is 184 petabytes (a petabyte is 1000 terabytes or if your counting 1 Million gigabytes) and 4.  Google’s annual bandwidth cost is 344 Million… about a 1 million dollars a day.  These are really, really big numbers.

So, aside from just being astounded at the enormity of Google (or Microsoft, or Facebook) there is a very practical reason for talking about it.   Today’s websites demand much more server horsepower then in days past.  Not long ago, at the beginning of the decade, it was quite possible to host hundreds of websites on a couple of reasonably powerful web servers.  But web servers up until then were merely file servers doling out images and HTML as simple independent HTTP requests, a really simple task.   And remember that web servers are just computers and can only do so many things at one time.  When they try to do too many things at once, they slow down… or worse.

The last five years has seen an explosion of complexity in websites with much more intricate designs, increased functionality, improved user experience and enriched media.  All of those things that we now take for granted when we shop online, update our Facebook status, or pay our Credit Card bills online.  Today’s websites need need to talk to database servers to deliver dynamic content, or talk to media servers to deliver video, or talk to Ad servers to delver banner ads, or talk to external websites to grab RSS feeds, Tweet streams, or Facebook status updates.  As users we expect more.. in fact we demand more from the websites we visit.  All of this means that web servers have to work extra hard to deliver what are now considered basic sites.    Multiply that by ever-increasing Internet traffic and all of the sudden you might actually need a dedicated server to support just a handful websites or in some cases several servers to support just one website.   If your website is complex and gets a fair amount of traffic, you just might need your own server.   Think about it… Google has over 1 Million web servers, Facebook 30,000.  Those are WOW numbers.

Lots of customers will call us for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because when they “Google” something their site isn’t where they think it should be.

Here are just 3 quick reasons why this may be so:

1. The site was designed several years ago and doesn’t conform to Google’s latest search engine practices.
2. The content doesn’t change on it very often.
3. Your company has changed and the look and feel of your site just doesn’t match what goals you have in your mind for your recent marketing efforts.

These are all easy things to have happen. And these things are all things that can happen to anybody.  Looking at your site objectively is just as challenging as looking at your business objectively.  It is like a parent thinking, “My child is ugly.” – that just doesn’t happen!

A website needs a “facelift” using SEO and most often a new design if any of these 3 things are the case.  Oftentimes you can do all the perfect SEO things and still your web traffic isn’t what you want it to be.

Why?

Is it because your website may be “ugly?”  I don’t mean “ugly” from the definition of “ugly,” but I mean Google can rate you top on the list all day long, but if people continue to get to your site and decide it wasn’t what they thought it may be, or it was frustrating to find their way around, Google finds out and you will slip in your rankings. 

This is because your website no longer makes the user engaged when they get there. They have no reason to care to learn more.

And hey, that’s good information to have!  If your business isn’t growing or changing with the challenges of the times, then you are not doing business!  One way this can really pop out at you is to be engaged in marketing your company online, you insert a link to it, once people get to the site, they “BOUNCE” off it.  (Maybe you are doing some social media, Facebook fan pages, etc.) The visitor doesn’t like it, it isn’t what they thought it might be, they could be confused by your message.

Who was the person that said, “Part of the problem is recognizing there is one” ?  No one is telling you, your business is bad, your company is bad, you don’t even know who these people are!  But they are telling you something needs to change.  Either a new look and feel, spruce up your logo, change the content on the front page, add some new things that draw them in .  What is your competition doing? When you change the message so it reflects how your company is NOW. – Depending on your company perhaps people want to interact with your website?

A website isn’t meant to look the same, be the same, act the same for eternity.  How people are using the internet today is different than they were 5 or even 3 years ago.  You probably are too!  So spice it up a bit.  If you are marketing a site that isn’t really who you are or isnt being found, all the programming your web developer can do to get your ranking in Google better may not matter because once your potential customer gets there he may be saying, “Ewwww.”

We talk about Search Engine Optimization on this blog all the time.

Here are some links if you would like to read more:  Click here

Here is one about Site Measurements

Remember “Search Engine Optimization” is like painting a house. A fresh coat of paint looks nice from the outside, but if the house is falling down and in bad repair, then you need to look at the HOUSE (your website) itself.

If you have been watching my Facebook posts or tweets I have been in a technology nightmare for more than a week.  You never really know how much you depend on something until it doesn’t work now, do you? Just like everything else!

Some bad person or robot  decided to use my Twitter address to SPAM my followers by sending them a direct message about some quiz I wanted them to take.  My followers (I have only 800 or so) started sending me notes because they knew I don’t do that.  So I go in to my Twitter account and changed the password.  Then I believe that same robot kept trying to get into my account (using the old password) and I got locked out of Twitter when I tried to log in.  It also effected my Tweetdeck Account. Twitter is such a great tool for me, when I couldnt use it, it completely threw me off guard and my schedule just flew out the window. AND I had to wait for Twitter and Tweetdeck to unlock my access, which took a lot longer than I thought it would.  If you are looking for any help like this on Twitter, click here.

THEN, I tried to synchronize my Blackberry using Desktop Manager. Unfortunately, because I had tried a trial version of MissingSynch earlier this year and didnt like it, I decided to never used it again. Couldnt figure out how to uninstall it. When I tried to synch using Desktop Manager it kept bumping into MissingSynch which kept telling me to buy it for $39.95 and wouldn’t allow Desktop Manager to synchronize for me.  SOMEHOW, as I looked over at my Blackberry I noticed that I had this spinning hourglass on the screen that was all it did, spin and spin.  When I “Googled” the error code it was horrible news.  Google sent us to Crackberry.com. At first glance it looks like a store, it is more than that! There are helpful forums and here is a link to them. So I learned then my whole operating system was history.  I still don’t know exactly how it happened, but with the help of Central Maine Wireless and my business partner Scott, I was able to get a loaner Blackberry and uninstall MissingSynch (the uninstall file was missing, so we had to be cautiously creative to remove it!) I will never recommend this application to anyone, even though I am not sure what happened in my situation but I am very leary of it.

The good news is, I have a copy in a secure cloud of my stuff that didn’t get effected.  The bad news was, I didn’t dare synchronize it with my loaner because I didn’t want to risk anything else happening! So finding people’s phone numbers and other information that I had in my original phone has been problematic.

Maybe it has been the full moon or just technology gremlins, but when it happens to you, take a deep breath and know the world isnt over, it just has slowed down a bit!!