What happened when I increased Font Sizes

Website font sizes are an important factor in determining if a visitor leaves your website happy or sad. The current study will help you figure out what effect increasing your website's font size will have on the overall quality and quantity of visitors.

One of the most popular articles on codemakit was based on a study which answered a simple question. One which has been asked by numerous webmasters, designers and bloggers worldwide. The question was "What is the best font size?" it could be rephrased as "Which font size would lead to highest user interaction?" or "Which of these should I choose, 12px, 14px, or 16px?"

During the research, I came across several opinions. Some wanted to "Follow your heart!" (I don't know how their websites are read), Some said "The size depends on the type of website" (Which is why I conducted the study). You can still check out the complete study on Type of Fonts, Size of Fonts and Color of Fonts. But, after the study, the result were condensed into simple 4 letters ; 14px.

The preface

Based on the previous study, codemakit changed the default font size from its 12px to 14px. Then the blog was observed for 30 days during which several parameters were monitored closely. The following parameters were studied.

• Number of Visitors (Page views)
• Bounce Rates (%)
• Pages per Session
• Percentage New Sessions

The Results

The following data was observed from the blog after the change in text size was made.
After the change in font size was made, Several parameters were observed for a period of 17 days.

Changes in Page Views

Regarding the changes in page views. It is abundantly clear that the number of page views increased after the changes were made. A rough estimation points out that the increase in page views were upwards of 35 percentage. Though the direct increase in the number of page views is often attributed to marketing strategies and Search Engine Optimization, the sudden increase in the number of page views can be indirectly caused by an increase in returning visitors and the increase in the number of pages viewed in one session. Those parameter shall be discussed separately later.

The following Graph depicts the changes in the number of page views in the 43 day period. Kindly keep in mind that the changes in the font size were completed on 25th December 2014. The repercussions from it are depicted in the later part of the graph.

Bounce Rate

It was found that the overall bounce rate of the blog decreased. Though bounce rates are never a perfect indicator of a blog's health, they are still a good indicator of what your visitors do when they enter your website. A lower bounce rate would inevitably be better than a higher one. A question arises, Is it possible that the bounce rate was decreasing from before the time the changes were made? 

Though it is possible for a growing and improving blog, one can still find out if the change in the bounce rate was premeditated by the change in font size. Hence we take two different data sets, One from the bounce rates of the blog before changes were made and another, bounce rates at the blog after the changes were made.

With the help of excel trend-line function, trend lines were created for both the data sets. It was found that the bounce rate decreased from 87.7% to 86.4%, i.e. a 1.5% decrease. However one look at the data after changes were made would show that the bounce rate decreased from 89.5% to 77.1% i.e. 14% decrease. This proves that increasing the font size decreases bounce rate at a much higher rate than better content quality management practices.

Percentage New Sessions

Percentage New sessions are the total percentage of sessions opened with new users. decreasing this number from 100 would give you the percentage of users which came to the website for more than one time. A higher percentage new sessions might mean that most of your readers are first timers. A lower percentage new sessions would indicate the presence of loyal returning visitors who come back to the blog because of sheer content quality or better marketing practices.

Percentage new Sessions in the experiment decreased from 90% to 88%. Though the decrease is a meager 2.2 percent, this might indicate an increase in returning visitors as a result of the changes made. Further analysis from data sets created before the experiment and after the experiment said that the % new sessions increased before and after the changes. But the changes led to an initial lowering of the values. In short, the effects of the changes made could not be analysed properly and can be termed inconclusive.

Pages per Session

The pages per session is the number of webpages opened by the user during his visit. The only anomaly observed in the experiment was that the pages per session actually decreased during time. Though the decrease was a meager 0.1 which is a decrease of 6%, a value much higher to be discarded. No logical reason explains this phenomena.

It is thought that more data for Percentage New Sessions and Pages per Session are required before venturing into an in-depth analysis of the reasoning of the phenomena.

Related Reading

You might want to understand why we chose 14px from our quest to determine the best website Font Sizes.

Are you aware of the best practices for Website Fonts, read this and you will be.

If you have doubts about some of the terms used here, you can check out this bounce rate article on how bounce rates are calculated or this one on how a blog dies.

We also did a similar article where a parameter in the blog was changed and its data was analysed. It actually doubled the number of page views.

This answered,

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Tips for Comment Moderation. What Should you keep and what should you delete? Part 2

Comment moderation is one of those important aspects of managing a blog which tells the readers about the integrity and quality of the blog. 

A previous article on Tips for comment moderation talked about protecting a blog's image against comment spammers. This is the part two of the series.

The Link Factory Type

A very ancient breed of comment spammers often use a technique known as comment link flooding. In short, they flood the comment section with one or more links of a particular webpage, hoping that the sheer numbers would lead to an increase in the back links, thereby leading to higher page rank.
As mentioned above, they are an ancient breed because, such methods have already been countered by search engine's algorithms and have little or no effect on both the websites.

Another reason why such comments often do not work on websites is because, the websites have already marked their comments section as no-follow (Which means that any links in the comment section would not affect your image at google or similar search engines). Hence any attempt at garnering back links by spamming comments is foiled.

The Hire Me Type

Some Comment spams are often disguised as marketing initiatives from unemployed designers/ developers and SEO professionals. Though it is not hard to decipher what they write, their text is often accompanied by options to hire the writer. Their comment reeks of "Hire Me!" all along. Needless to say, you should remove such comments.

The Following comment was found on a previous article at codemakit talking about the dangers of trading an article with a service.

The Naked URL Type

You will often find that comments like the one below have little or no un-hyperlinked text. One often wonders if it is a ruse, with spammers trying to garner pageranks by adding links as mentioned in the first case.

However, you must be careful. One look at the URL of the link would tell you if it is related to the article or not. If it is related and genuinely adds quality to the article, you can keep it. If not you should remove it as a crushed bug on a car's windshield.

True to Myself Type

Now you might see some comments which are genuinely concerned about the article and the blog.The first method of checking a comment against spam is to find is if the comment contains a hyperlink. The second method of finding if a comment isn't spam is to check the content for relevance to the article itself.

Like the previous article on comment moderation, Here's an example of a genuine comment in which the author is concerned about the content of the article and phrases his/her comment accordingly.

The following article is on the geomatic changes in blog.

The Shakespearean Spammer

Not often you encounter wordy Shakespearean comment spammers. Only one thing differentiates such comment spammers from normal ones, The use of herculean amount of words, often relating to the article as a bee relates to a space ship and nearly every character of the comment has been copied form somewhere.

The following comment was received at codemakit's article about including a favicon to your website.

Guess what? The spammer has commented about international concept of work from home! Who the F comments about work from home at a favicon based article? The comment was so large, that complete screenshot would have increased the length of the post by 30% and would have left you dazed.

Looking London Talking Tokyo Part 2

Some comment spammers do not use hyperlinks in their comments to avoid being filtered by automatic comment spam filters. The following comment is about Business phone lines at the Jetbro Interview article.

In such cases, it is often advisable to skim through the comment to ensure that the comment is in accordance with the article itself.



Though this type of comment spam has been discussed before, I could not stop myself from entering the following comment from entering the wall of fame.

The Brazen Comment Spam

Now there exist a rare breed of brazen super-strong, fearless comment spammers who defies every law of commenting on article.

First, Comments are often advised against adding links in their comments.
Secondly, Comments should be related.
Thirdly, the transition of ideas in the comments should be smooth and not abrupt.
Fourthly, You should not comment spam on an article on "Tips for comment moderation"!

Related Reading,

Liked it? You will obviously like the Part I of article on tips for comment moderation.

If you're not aware, here is the method of removing spam comments from the blog.

Have you read some of our funniest comment  spams here's Part I and here's part II?

Check out a case study about how a single sentence reduced comment spams by half.

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Which Font Color is the best?

Did you know font colors can alter moods? Learn how professional award winning websites change text colors to ensure maximum user interaction and understanding.

I recently read an article 'Evoke Emotion through typography' where the author talked about connecting emotionally with people with the help of fonts.

The author stresses on the need of creating a relationship with the visitors on the website, a concept loosely labeled as 'emotional design', which isn't that illogical. Emotions help in decision making, increases motivation, affects memories and much more.

So here's an analysis on different colors (or different shades of grey) that award winning websites use for exceptional user experience. However, before going any further, you must first determine which category your website falls in.

The Study

For better understanding of the readers, the color  variations used by different websites have been clubbed into 7 parts  i.e. #000000, #111111, #222222, #333333, #444444, #555555, #666666 which can be assumed to contain  the color black as percentage 100.0, 93.3, 86.7, 80.0, 73.3, 66.7, 60.0 respectively as shown in the following table.

% of Black	Red	Green	Blue	Hex Code
100 % Black	0	0	0	#000000
93.3 % Black	16	16	16	#111111
86.7 % Black	34	34	34	#222222
80 % Black	51	51	51	#333333
73.3% Black	68	68	68	#444444
66.7% Black	85	85	85	#555555
60% Black	102	102	102	#666666

Font Colors for Bloggers

If you have a personal or a professional blog, written by one or many authors about some particular subject and the views are of the author only, then its blog.

The color variations used by bloggers varied a lot, however majority of them about 75% never crossed the 73.3% black mark (Or 75 % websites had fonts darker than #444444 hex).

If you're a blogger I would suggest #222222 or #333333 as your best bet.

Font Colors for News based Websites

If you are not into information or Ideas, and just want to talk about current affairs (i.e.) what is happening currently in the world, country or your locality, you have a news based website in your hands.

News websites on the other hand were fairly obvious; half of them used the color #333333 (Which contains 80% of Black and 20% white).

So If you run a news based website close your eyes and use #333333.

Font Colors for Journal based Websites

If you dig research with charts and tables, then your website is an academic journal.  Examples for such might include anything ranging from journals from academic institutions to private research diary.

Journal websites showed a different trend, in those websites there were two classes. One had the darkest possible color #000000 (i.e. 100% black), which were 44% of the websites.

The second class believed in a lighter approach which used #333333 (i.e. 80% of black and 20% of white), which were 30 % of the websites in the sample.

For research minded Journals, You have an option between #000000 and #333333.

Font Color for Information based Websites

And if you're not interested in events or ideas or your opinion, but just want to create a ready reference for others which would help them find factual information, you're involved in an information based website. E.g. Websites like Wikipedia, dictionary.com or thesaurus etc.

Information based websites too had nothing concrete to show, there was no definite trend visible in information based websites.

In short you can use anything.

Conclusion

News based websites can use #333333 as their font color. Academic Journals have a choice between #000000 and #333333. However for Bloggers and news based websites, instead of using any color combination, I would like to attract your attention to the following paragraph.

According to the research conducted on 'The Impact of Web Page Text-Background Color Combinations on Readability, Retention, Aesthetics, and Behavioral Intention', the author contests that color combinations with a higher contrast will ensure higher readability and retention than the ones with lower contrast. According to them, the priority of the color combinations looks like this,

Rank	Background color	Text Color	Example
1	White	Black	Example
2	Dark Blue	Light Blue	Example
3	Cyan	Black	Example

If you're not sure, which category your website falls in, close your eyes and use #000000 or 100% black as your default font color with a white background.

Website Category	Font Color
Blog Based Websites	#222222 or #333333
News Based Websites	#333333
Journal Based Websites	#000000 or #333333
Information Based Websites	#000000

Related reading,

• For those who would like to understand more about colors and their combinations, you can view the information at tiger colors.
• You can check out a thread at stack exchange on User experience on the best type of color combination too.

More in font research Series

Find out Which Font Color is the best? - Did you know font colors can alter moods? Learn how professional award winning websites change text colors to ensure maximum user interaction and understanding.

Find out Which Font Type is the best? - Which font type is most favored by readers? Which font would keep them hooked to your website?

Find out Which Font Size is the best? - How do you know if your font size is readable enough? What font can be called too large and how many pixels are too small? 

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9 Types of Phishing Scams

There are 9 different types of Phishing attacks. How would you recognize a Phishing Scam? How do you know if you've been phished by a scammer and how to protect yourself from one.

Scamsters often try to convince you that they're authentic, respectable, important persons of the society. So let me ask you a question, Name some professions who get respect and adulation from their fellow citizens? 

First Doctor, A doctor is seen as a healer, a life giver and hence people associate many of their positive feelings towards a doctor. Maybe he once saved you or your near one, hence your gratitude gets attached to any doctor you see. He/She might ask for your passwords and you'll happily divulge your web accounts passwords. Another is an Astronaut but since the probability of an astronaut mailing you is excruciatingly low, we'll leave them aside. 

Another profession is a corporate big shot. The directors, chairmen etc are the people who sign your paychecks (Most of you), also a tinge of adulation comes from the fact that they've probably worked a lot and hence have reached at such a position. So, It is actually overwhelming that a corporate big shot actually mailed you something. So you'll be tempted to look for once.

Types of Phishing Scams

There are actually 9 Types of Phishing Scams

1. The Corrie Wright Scam

2. The Scam Victim Compensation Scam

3. Loner Loaner Phishers.

4. The Plastic Money Phishers

5. The ‘Make 400$ in a week’ scam

6. The ‘Damsel in Distress’ Phishing Scam

7. The Phishing Attachment Scam

8. The Dishonest Banker Phishing

9. The Threatening phishing Scam

The Corrie Wright Scam

In this type of Phishing Scam, Corrie is a doctor (Corrie could be an overweight unemployed bald man sitting in front of a computer with a pack of nachos in his hands).

I chose Corrie because majority of phishing scams of this type had the name of Corrie in it.

Now she tells the story of how she got scammed and traveled to Nigeria for her compensation. She finally advises to contact Mr. Michael Craig to whom she gave 420$ for the paper works. It is ironic to note that Section 420 of Indian Penal Code deals with scams and Cheating.

The Scam Victim Compensation Scam

Here the Phisher would innocently offer a way out of scams by shoving your mouth with another phishing attempt. They often disguise themselves as senior official (A director in this case who does not have any work other than sending emails to thousands of people with UPPERCASE subjects) of some really famous bank or a financial institution, who say that they have your file with them. 

Now they will claim that you have been scammed already and they’re here to help you get your compensation back. A dishonest person would think, “Wait! I was not scammed!” But “Sc** it! I’ll receive compensation, which means lots and lots of money!” 

Now, I’ll request you to read through the message first, find out the director’s name then come back to this page.

So be honest and think, “Why would a director of a company offer me compensation by putting the message subject in UPPERCASE? I’ll find out if the director is legal.” and then you’ll find the truth about the director. The director is a reputable figure Mr. Hikmet Ersek and his name nowhere resembles Mr. Mark James as given in the email.

Loner Loaner Phishers.

Phishing Loansters are another breed of scammers that scam you with loans with irresistible interest rates. But as usual, you need to pay some processing fees to make it happen. More than often your loans get rejected and you're left cursing.

The Plastic Money Phishers

They’ll offer you credit cards and an offer to save thousands of rupees. It is usually aimed at the mathematically challenged.

The ‘Make 400$ in a week’ scam

One of the most famous and intricate web scam is the make 2000$ or 4000$ per week scam. You'll encounter several testimonials from people who "used" the system and "got rich in a week”. The Website boasts of making you rich in a week. However, more daunting is the attempt from these websites to legalize the mail by adding a small Para at the end of the mail. 

It subsequently explains the readers that the mail was sent in compliance of a law or a bill and is in no way an infraction of the law. 

In this message there are two things wrong; 

• First, a bill is not a law, (It can be called as a draft as it has not been implemented) 

• Second, Spammers never provide actual email addresses/Names/Numbers etc so that you could unsubscribe.

They use the fact that people often don't check if the email was authentic or if the websites were certified. But, when many have used the law card, some often use the god card, i.e. some small phrases in the email like "God Bless us all" or "God bless you" etc. This is said to attach spiritual emotions filled with a theists' adulation. 

Some often use the confidentiality notice which essentially states that the mails between you and the party are confidential and should not be divulged to anyone. This tries to cement your understanding that the mail was authentic.

In short they'll use anything and everything to make sure you read and respond.

The ‘Damsel in Distress’ Phishing Scam

This was instantly recognized as a scam. However for the sake of this article, Reply was provided. They reply was to be short and sweet with a touch of interest and indifference. But to the two words I gave, the Phisher bombarded me with a 1600 worded essay delving into a girl’s heart breaking story. 

The scammer tries to include information based on real world events to fortify its lie. 

Phishing Attachment Scam

It is said that playing with fire will only burn you. On the search towards phishing and email scams, I burnt my hands too. The following message was delivered to my personal mail address, which never happened before.

Attaching a message/letter to an email actually lessens its chances to be read by any email provider’s filter. This sends the email directly into the inbox rather than your spam box thereby increasing the credibility of the mail.

The following mail was attached as a docx file. I’m sure, Gmail servers could not read through a docx file as it was delivered straight to the inbox.

The Dishonest Banker Phishing

There is always one banker who holds millions in his pocket but still wants to share it with you. The banker’s customer died without declaring a next of kin. Now the banker is interested in gulping down the money but instead wants you to pose as a beneficiary and get 50 % of the money.

The Threatening phishing Scam

You’ll be mailed by an authority,( Could be a policeman, toll booth, mail account provider etc) You’ll be threatened to do what they want or your services will be terminated immediately.

The Phisher Below did not provide me with a link, or else we could have gone further.

Related Reading,

You can read all about The Simple Steps to stay safe Online.

Find out about How Passwords are stored on Websites

Download Complete Report

Now you can download the Complete 23 Page Official Report on Different Types of Phishing Techniques.
You can also download the Funny Version of the Official Phishing Techniques Report, where we make fun of the phishers and their useless attempts at scamming people.

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When was a Webpage Updated

Ever wanted to find when was a webpage updated? Here are some methods to find out when a webpage was updated. We'll be discussing several methods to find when a webpage was updated. 

For example the WayBack machine method, change Detection method and JavaScript method.

The WayBack Machine

One of the most popular methods for non-programmers is the wayback machine method. Codemakit had already discussed the method in one of its previous articles on the Internet Archivist.

It is a project by 'The Internet Archive' a non-profit enterprise which has been receiving data from Alexa and many websites. In short it is a type of library that stores versions of your website.

The usage is awfully clear, you need to enter the URL of the website which you need to check in the search bar and press enter. The previous version would be right before your eyes. Now it must be clear that you cannot use the Wayback machine for determining the last updated version of a website that needs a login before you enter, simply because, the website would need authentication.

Another problem is you would not get a very accurate date. For a smaller/ not so popular website it would be in the range of a month. If you need a more accurate method of finding when your page was updated, keep reading.

Change Detection Method

A website known a change detection also performs a similar task but differently. Here you need to paste the URL of the page and your email address. So, whenever the website/Webpage URL changes, you'll be the first one to receive a notification. The only problem with this method is you will not be able to get any historical data. The mails would start from the point when you enter the email address and never before.

The JavaScript Method

The JavaScript method is by far the most simple and the most effective method i have found to determine the last updated/modified version of the webpage. The steps too are simple.

1. Go to the URL you need
2. Paste the following code "alert(document.lastModified)" (without the quotes)
3. Now type the following on the code "javascript:" (without the quotes) *
4. Such that the complete code looks like "javascript:alert(document.lastModified)" (without the quotes)
5. Press enter **

The steps are outlined below,

* Note. It is very important that you type in the code in third step. It doesn't seem to work without it. The code is said to work in all major browsers and gives the most accurate time and date.

** Note. You need to remember that the results are in the MM/DD/YYYY format and the Time is in HH:MM:SS format. This is particularly useful when you have a date as 01/04/2014.

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Why do you need a multilingual website

Learn how you lose about 95% of your visitors and how to get them back. Demographics play an exceedingly pivotal role in determining the fate of your website. Language does pose a barrier if you want your blog to go truly global. 

Codemakit ran an article on “Why do some countries hate your website?” answering the question how a simple change in spelling can cause your blog to stop receives visitors/readers from certain countries. On similar lines, the language in which your blog was written in bounds the overall reach of your blog.

Languages Based on Mother Tongue

According to Wikipedia, the percentage of world population speaking English is about 5.43%. Considering many WebPages and websites are now made in English, you would wonder, that you're losing about 94.57 % of your potential readers just by writing in English!

Table 1 : Languages (Mother Tongue) spoken by people around the world

Rank	Language	Native speakers (millions)	% of world population
1,	Mandarin	955*	14.40%
2,	Spanish	405*	6.15%
3,	English	360*	5.43%
4,	Hindi	310*	4.70%
5,	Arabic	,295*	4.43%

Source : Wikipedia Retrieved on 10th June 2014

Here comes the need for a language specific approach towards webpage creation. But there is a catch; the above data is basically for mother tongues. So 5.43% of the world's population has their mother tongue as English. (Now the figures do not disappoint).

Languages Acquired By Readers

But what if your mother tongue is not English and for answers you have to look towards English content on the web. So you use the language skills hammered in by your teachers at school and look for content published in English. Using this scenario in mind, you get almost 27% of the world as your potential readers. (Now that is pretty and believable)

Table 2 : Languages (Acquired) spoken by people around the world

Rank	Language	Internet users	Percentage
1	English	565004000	27.00%
2	Chinese	509965000	25.00%
3	Spanish	164969000	8.00%
4	Japanese	99182000	5.00%
5	Portuguese	82587000	4.00%

Source : Wikipedia Retrieved on 10th June 2014

Languages of Existing Webpages

In the previous Para we discussed a problem. A Problem often faced by readers all over the world. You do not find WebPages with content in your language. Would you like to hear what the language most websites are made of is? The answer not surprising is English or Anglais (I'm learning French). But what alarms is not the language, but the sheer number of WebPages using the language. What would be your estimate? Huh? 20% or 25% or 35%? Prepare to be floored; it is a whopping 56%, followed by 6% of Russian and 6% of German.

Table 3 : Webpages Existing on the web (Based on Languages)

Rank	Language	Percentage
1	English	55.70%
2	Russian	6.00%
3	German	6.00%
4	Japanese	5.00%
5	Spanish	4.60%

Source : Wikipedia Retrieved on 10th June 2014

This was the problem I was talking about. You need answers; you have a presentation/ test/ viva tomorrow and all you find are WebPages in English. Hence you force yourself to plough deep into the webpage and try to understand the obscure language (The sentence might be futile for codemakit readers reading the blog in English). This might lead to visitors leaving webpage in search of a non Shakespearean website where the language is much simpler. This would increase your bounce rate, maybe this is the reason why your blog is not growing.

A Comparison

Here's a comparison of the languages discussed above.

Table 4 : Comparison of Languages, Based on demographics, Analytics and Website Content.

Rank	Language (Mother tongue)	Language (Internet Users)	Language (Website Content)
1	Mandrin	English	English
2	Spanish	Chinese	Russian
3	English	Spanish	German
4	Hindi	Japanese	Japanese
5	Arabic	Portuguese	Spanish

Source : Wikipedia Retrieved on 10th June 2014

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is evident from the fact that we would always like to be presented with content in our language, and the apparent lack of content on the web based on reader demographics, we should strive towards WebPages/ Websites with localized content presented in local languages. Even General Elections of countries were affected because of such tactics. Online Giants are doing it (Example : the Case of Wikipedia) and so should you (Unless you’re a potato blogger)

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Why some countries hate your website

Its 2:00 AM and you're sitting in front of your computer with chips in one hand and a beverage in another. You are reviewing the analytics data. Where do the visitors come from? Where do they go?  Which pages they visit and for what time etc. 

You start thinking, "Hey! Why are my visitors more from US than UK. Why are there minimal visitors in China and why are hordes of them in Australia?"

The answer though mind boggling, is quite simple indeed. Before getting into the details of the visitor demographics Let us get rid of some irrelevant factors.

Is it Blocked?

There is a lot of speculation regarding website metrics in China. Some report large number of visitors some report a fraction of its fraction. With the government exercising excessive control over what can be published or what can be viewed, one thing can be concluded with surety, it is not your fault if your website does not receive thundering applause from china or any other country.

Chances are your website has been blocked there. (However, there is a way to find if your website is blocked). Same might be the case with some Middle East countries too. Though you can still move around it, but that’s not the point.

New Google Algorithm?

"Change must always be embraced", the supposed motto of the people working at Google Search, The Guys sitting there are responsible for any modification in the search algorithm used by Google.

With a simple change from their side, cause great repercussions in the visitor inflow in our websites. So that cannot be ruled out. You can actually see through a case study, how Google's algorithm change lead to the change in visitors geographically.

The Actual Reason

Now that we've removed them from our scope, we can focus on much more pressing issues on hand. Why do some countries love your articles and some do not? Do you offend the countries? Or is there some problem with your language? (As an accent cannot be a problem in written content). The answer is really simple. "Spelling".

Color or Colour or Couleur?

It is the way you spell your words that makes the difference. let us look at some examples from Wikipedia. Like for the simplest of example. A word used extensively in almost all websites, "Colour" or "Color". 

It is fascinating to note that the word is spelt "color" in United States but is spelt as "Colour" in almost all English speaking countries. (French however introduce another twist and spell it as "Couleur").

Organisation or Organization?

Another example can be "Organisation" or "Organization". This one however is a tricky one. UK, New Zealand, South Africa are known to use it interchangeably. US on the other hand prefer "Organization".

The Story

My friend used to wonder why his blog receives more visitors from US and not from India, his target audience. His was a commercial website and he started a blog to help in sales. But the website received more visitors from outside the country and his sales started to drop. 

Simple psychology says, “you would obviously buy from the nearby shop than order from abroad”. His puzzlement increased when the blog started to increase visitors, actually started hurting his income as most readers were from United States. His competitors got the better of him and he was going to shut down for good.

The answer to the problem is simple enough. The man used Microsoft Word to spell check his blog posts or Item descriptions. His plan to avoid spelling errors actually backfired. What he didn't know was the spell check in Microsoft word in his system was preset at English (US). So, confusing words were automatically corrected to those spelled in US. He used to post the spell checked article at his blog. 

How do Spellings Affect your Website?

Let us suppose he had an article named the "Colors of Flowers". When a needy slash curious person from India/UK types in the search string, "Flower Colours", she/he would not be presented with my friend's article. 

But when another needy slash curious guy from US types in the string "Flower Colors", he will be presented with my friend's article. This is how your spellings could change who you cater to.

Now increasing the usability of this concept by a notch, we can safely say that if you want your visitors from a specific country, set your spell check in that language. The steps are outlined here,

How to change the preset Language in Microsoft Office

1. First click on Review Tab in Microsoft Word 2007.
2. In the proofing option, select "Set Language".
3. Now you'll be presented with a window containing all languages. Select the one you find suitable and click OK. You’re good to go.

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