codemakit | Website Research and Interviews: miscellaneous

Showing posts with label miscellaneous. Show all posts

Feb 24, 2016

Vowel Length of the Top Million Website Names

11:11 PM concepts, miscellaneous, Research

Ever thought, How many vowels are present in award winning successful website names? How are these websites named?

Of-course if you think about it, the answer seems pretty clear at first. When you name a website, it has to have enough letters to make a meaningful yet logical impression on the viewer's mind.

However, a name that is long taxes the memory of the viewer and it is unlikely you'll see him visiting your website anytime soon, if you have a website name such as, "cuteandfunnywebsitenames"

But if you have a website name that is a single syllable or contains negligible characters, it would fail to register on the memory of the viewer. Another reason why website names with the least number of characters are uncommon and hard to use is because, they're expensive.

A study on the length of website names can be found at one of our previous articles on number of characters in website names for top million websites.

But what about the number of vowels?

Is there a thumb rule for how many vowels should a website name contain? A larger number of vowels would entail a larger number of syllables. And as seen from one of our previous articles on the relation between page views and syllables (An Experiment on readability), that a larger number of syllables mean a higher degree of complexity in the word itself. So larger number of vowels are not good. But what about lesser number of vowels? Words like ted, bed, cup etc seem like a good choice considering a single vowel and a memorable word.

The problem with words containing lesser number of vowels is that the words created from them are often too memorable. Which often triggers too many memories and associations in your brain leading to a hazy link between the website name and the content that you viewed. Also vowels are often associated with moods too. For example, the vowel 'i' is often associated with a happy mood. You can find more about the vowels and the moods they elicit at Dailymail or you could try how brands name themselves.

Observations

while both extremes are not good, Let us find what do the top million websites do. As is evident from the graph below, all websites have an average of 3-4 vowels in their names.

The top 100k even have an average of 3.2. This average further moves towards 4 letters when we move towards the higher end of the million.

Conclusions

Though higher number of vowels in website names aren't good, the lower number of vowels also pose a certain risk to the website image.

As per the analysis, codemakit recommends 3-4 vowels in your website name.

The Premise

But what you CAN change is the website URL name for any future projects that you work upon. What is really interesting is the near mathematical graph followed in our analysis in this post.

As discussed in the first part of this series on the word length of top million website names, the averge word length of a website is 7 words. Also the average number of vovels in the URL name of top million websites in the world is just 3.

The Experiment

We would try and segregate the data into ranges to get a better idea of trends and create thumbrules out of it.

For the sake of discussion, we'll divide the complete data into chunks of 100,000 each. Top 100,000 websites among the million will be displayed as "0 to 100,000".

Length of the Top Million Website Names Graph

As depicted in the graph, the total length of most websites in the top 100,000 websites is 8.85.
What seems interesting is that as you move towards the lower ranked websites, the average length of the website name increases.

Length of the Top Million Website Names Table

In the range 100,000-200,000 the average touched 9 letters and in the range 200,000-300,000 the average touched 10 letters. The trend follows an increasing parabolic path and it seems from first look that increasing the length of your website name might put you at a disadvantage.

Conclusions

Lesser number of letters in a website denotes efficiency. It also lessens the reader's burden of remembering the word or the name itself.

Hence one must strive towards lesser number of words.

Word Length

For any URL of the format, ., the website name is most important, as it defines the website, makes it visible and gives it an identity. Lets find out what our analysis says about website name.

Firstly, It was found that the frequency of website followed a typical Gaussian curve while attaining the peak at around 7-8 letters. About 100,000 websites within the top million had a word length of 7-8 letters. It is also imperative to note that though we've reached the peak at 7-8 letters, there still exist websites that have lengths of more than 20 letters!

Vowel Length

Now, can you think of 20 letter English word? I tried and could find the word ABSTEMIOUSNESSES, (a 16 letter word). What is really, interesting is that, a website with a name longer than most can imagine still features among the top million in the world.

Total number of Vowels and Website Frequency

Another interesting observation is that the number of vowels in websites too followed a Gaussian curve. The most common number of vowels in a website name is 3. In the million websites, 10% of them had a single vowel. It is also worth mentioning that 36,000 websites do not even have a vowel.

Of course, there are websites with more than 10 vowels in them, but nothing can be said without comparing the total length of such names. So, to understand the data better, we divide the number of vowels with the total number of letters in the word.

Vowels as a percentage of Word length

Since, analysis of such huge data set is difficult, we would divide the complete vowel data into bands of 0.2 or 20% each.

One look at Vowel percentage and website frequency data would tell us that for most websites, 40 percent of the word length is a vowel and 60% is a consonant.

Moving towards the exceptions, more than 500 websites in our data-set contains 80-100 percent vowels. Also, as mentioned above, 36,000 websites do not have any vowels at all, i.e. 3.6%. Finally, around 90% of websites lie in the band of 0.2 to 0.6.

In Conclusion,

After analyzing the top million websites we find that,

Most websites have a word length of 8 words
Most websites have a vowel length of 3 words
Most websites have 20-40% of their name as vowel

Finally, You can still have an amazing website even when your website name does not have a vowel or is filled with vowels.

Prevailing Theory

Now let us take a moment to digest. In an article or a video, what readers look after is not the questions of the interviewer, but the answers of the interviewee. So the copyright could be attributed to the interviewee. However since the interview is of no consequence if it is not published through a media, the interviewer too can claim copyright for the same.

One theory often prevails that if the interviewer publishes the interview at a location, he/she is called the de facto copyright holder. However as is mentioned in the "Rights of Writers" article, which is not the case always.

If a preset agreement between the interviewer and the interviewee is not present, some courts can look at it in a different light. It can be seen as if the interviewee had agreed implicitly to the copyright.

The matter of copyright often creeps up when the interviewee does not want the interview to be used in one way or another. For example, if you interview a person who does not want a specific part of interview to be broadcasted. When you publish it, you are liable to attract problems on the basis of copyright violation.

Best Practice

So what is the best practice? It is highly advised to get the interviewee to agree to transfer copyright to you before conducting the interview. If it is an email interview, ask the interviewee to accede to an agreement. If it is a videotaped interview, get them to agree on the tape that the copyright of the following interview will be held by the publisher itself. However, if the interviewee wants to say something 'of the records', ensure that you honor the request.

If you’re not much of a control freak, you can get the interviewee to agree to a creative commons type license to the work created (Though you’ll have to first check which creative commons license would suit the work better).

Examples

The following is a sample document asking interviewees to accede to the agreement before getting interviewed. Click here to get the sample copyright document for Email Interview and Click here to get the sample copyright document for Video Interview.

An Introduction

Mohit: Tell us about yourself, I gather you are situated in UK and you started in 2012 end. How did safely endangered start?

Chris: Hey, I’m Chris and I’m a comic artist! I’ve been drawing and sketching comics since I was in school but only started putting stuff on the web in late 2012. I enjoy making people laugh and spend a lot of time online. I was originally planning on creating a website that allowed other users to share their own content. I never thought people would enjoy my own stuff, so I’m truly grateful to those who read my comic!

On works

Mohit: I once asked the same question to Reza Farazmand and all I got was a few grunts. So Chris, tell us about your process of comic creation. How do you do it? And what is the thought process when you start with a comic?

Chris: Grunt. Grunt. Grunt.

Mohit: Hmm, that was enlightening; OK next one, How different are gif comics than the png ones? Do gif comics receive more response?

Chris: I've only made one gif comic and so far the response has been pretty positive! I've had a little practice animating frames before. The concept isn't too difficult but it’s incredibly time consuming! The final animation is usually worth the effort, though.

On Revenue

Mohit: Where does majority of your revenue come: Advertising, Greeting Cards or Merchandise (like mugs or iphone cases)?

Chris: Most of the revenue comes from advertising. I hate having ugly adverts on my website but it helps pay the bills! I've recently began using Patreon, a website were people pledge donations in exchange for rewards. My hope is that it becomes more popular and, at some point in the future, I can remove the adverts from my site completely. I’d love to create a book at some point as well. I’ll put you down for 6 copies.

Mohit: Wow, I’d love to have a book from safelyendangered, thanks!

Something Personal

Mohit: What gives you happiness (other than drawing)?

Chris: I’m an enthusiastic guitar player. I've always loved watching live music and playing with friends. I hate it when the crowd is too noisy at a concert though. Just be quiet so I can sing my duet. Jeez.

Lastly

Mohit: Lastly, what advice would you give to budding enthusiasts?

Chris: If you enjoy a thing. Don’t stop doing the thing! Actually, don’t listen to me; I’m just an idiot with a graphics tablet.

That’s all for today guys; Thank you Chris for such amusing responses. Readers can connect with Chris at his Twitter handler and his Facebook page too. If you have another question that you would like to ask, drop it in the comment below and I’ll make sure you are answered.

This was,

An Amusing Interview at SafelyEndangered with Chris McCoy MohitChar

A Case Study on Fair Use Copyright Policy

4:30 AM Case Study, Copyright, miscellaneous

There was a time when I was cleaning up codemakit back-links. This means removing codemakit name from websites that are not relevant or not important or are simply degrading.

The pretense of the exercise was that if the quality of back-links is improved, the website stats will improve.

The exercise dictates opening each and every website from Google search results which looks like a domain analyzer, i.e. a website that hosts information about other domains. So, for codemakit, one would find websites, hosting DNS information about codemakit.com.

An Average DNS Based Website

DNS (Domain Name Server) information hosted on such websites include, the following information,

Name of the website,
Name of the Owner of the Domain,
Email address of the owner,
Email address of the technical staff of the website,
Contact details for privacy violation

Now obviously websites with such content are not relevant at all. So that means mailing each and every one of them asking them (Politely) to take down any content related to codemakit.com.

The problem however lies in one place. Most websites never respond to your mail. Some do respond after a week or so, apologizing that they were busy. However, there is one type of website which hosts not only the DNS information of blogs but also their content.

Such websites host the following information in addition to the DNS information

New Type of DNS Based Website

Some often say that this was because of web owners submitting their websites to several search engines as a part of their naïve SEO strategy, only finding out later that those were not search engines but just directories hosting such information.

They use specially designed bots to copy information from your personal blog/Website and host it on their websites. On one look this can be called as a blatant violation of your copyright. (Assuming your website has a copyright notice). But only when you visit such websites you find that not only have they shirked any responsibility of violating a digital law, they are justifying their actions as well.

How do they justify or rationalize copying data from a website? By citing a Policy named as fair use Policy.

In the following example, one can see how content from codemakit.com was copied on a website. When one rushes to the contact page in protest of its violation of copyright, one would find that the website is protected by fair use policy and "threats" would not work.

In the following example, "Just one question arises, "Does the snippet provided on the website qualify as a preview?"

Typical Design of a website hosting DNS and Content Information

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.

The Scam Victim Compensation Scam codemakit

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 ‘Make 400$ in a week’ scam codemakit

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.

The ‘Damsel in Distress’ Phishing Scam codemakit

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.

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.

This was all about,

The Digital Face of India' s Elections

9:38 PM Case Study, concepts, Facebook, miscellaneous, Twitter

The Digital Face of India's General Elections

How was India's General Elections affected by Facebook and Twitter. Can social media be effective enough to reach the one Billion mark? Find out everything about the Digital Face of India's General Elections through this comprehensive report.

India has long poised to be a super power. Change, in a country of elephantine (over 1.3 Billion or 130 Crores) is difficult unless it is aided by external agencies.

With the influx of social media in the general population of India, It is hardly a coincidence that Digital media played an important role in the General Elections.

Just because of Elections, Hundreds of Firms started, Thousands of “Popular at the moment” Websites (This article is one of them) were created and millions of pages on election proceedings were created to capitalize on the awareness about the politicos. Numerous social media accounts were created, from twitter to Facebook to even Pinterest, Spam flowed like Water, Search Engine Optimization specialists were hired, Some even had a personal digital/IT team. In short, the political leaders never left a stone unturned to connect with general public. It is worthy to note that surprisingly Electronic media wasn't in much use in the last General elections sans some occasional Website advertisements by websites monetizing their content.

Last Elections : The Dawn of Digitization

Until 2009 Shashi Tharoor was one of the handful of Indian Politicians who had a twitter account and could manage to garner 6,000 Followers, a number currently risen to more than 2.1 Million (21 Lakhs).

With India's top politicos taking advantage of public's new found love for digital networking, We see people like Narendra Modi having 3.9 Million (39 Lakh) twitter followers and Arvind Kejriwal at 1.7 Million (17 Lakh). It seems the one who embraced the digital sphere most effectively, got the spoils.

Current Elections : The Plunge into Digitization

D S Rawat of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) had once said that political parties spend about 30% of their total budget on advertisements of which near 15% is spent at Social media.

Google Doodle on India's Election Results Day

If you have a look at Google Trends, a facility for determining the current and historical search trends for any term, You would find that the election commission received nationwide attention (because of one reason or another).

Twitter, 140 Characters shouted into a Microphone

Twitter actually played an important part in the elections because of its unique feature of certified identities (Similar to Website certification). If you follow @superstarrajinikant or @barackobama, you know that the twitter account in question is actually of the celebrity or politician you want.

Some thoughts on Digitization of Elections by Narendra Modi

When you receive a tweet from their account, you feel the rush as the words were actually written by them. There is no sure shot way to find that out in Facebook. But then again not all accounts on twitter counts, a study by Twopcharts claimed that "30% of existing Twitter accounts have sent 1-10 tweets and only 13% of the accounts have written at least 100 tweets."

Google's Labours

Google too had left no stone unturned to capitalize on the situation. Its brand new Google Election Hub received thundering response from Google users in India. With its “Know your Candidates” section, Indian Voters from across the country can find out every little detail about the leaders at their constituency.

For example you can see all the details about Mr. Narendra Modi in the image given below as stored by Google. The election hub has obviously helped users nationwide with its “Trends Section” depicting information in ever so tasteful manner, through info-graphics and tables and finally the “Hangouts” section quenching your thirst for more detail through videos.

Some things were not directly affected by Google. Some had a more subtle approach. Android games by unaffiliated developers like "Modi Run" or "Kursi Cricket" and some by Officials like the Election Commission App for voting killed two birds with an arrow. First by making voting a pleasurable experience and second by creating awareness or at least piquing curiosity about political parties.

The spike was most pronounced in this year's election as the EC was pelted with a handful of controversies. However out of the four, it was Modi who could capitalize on the elections perfectly and time its digital prowess. Modi Received a Spike during 2013 during his campaigning for a second term in Gujarat elections. He received second spike when his name came up for the post of Prime Minister during General Elections in India and the third one because of the results.

Rahul Gandhi enjoyed a peak during 2013 but somehow failed to regain that caliber again. Arvind Kejriwal on the other hand was practically nonexistent some months before the Delhi elections but rose quite quickly.

Facebook, The Blue Giant to the rescue

Facebook too started an "I am a voter" feature on their page, where facebook users of legal age would receive reminding them that voting process has started in their constituency. Facebook with a total number of users at 1.23 billion (123 Crores) has a largest market in US with 183 million (18.3 Crore) users. India comes in hard by crossing 100 million (10 Crore) recently. Like Google, the Blue Giant also launched “Election Tracker app” which tracks political candidates and provides real time information to general public.

At Facebook the number of likes received by Facebook pages of major Political parties too played an important role in determining the results of the elections, For example BJP received 4.5 Million (45 Lakh) Likes until the end of this monstrous democratic exercise. AAP at 2.1 Million (21 Lakh), Congress at 3.3 million (33 Lakh) etc.

The Future : The something-something of Digitization

In both developing and developed nations, the desktop users for the social Giant is surely increasing but the growth is not as admirable as the ones through mobile network. With the advent of better, smarter and larger Phones and PDAs, the approach towards social medium like Facebook and twitter has never been so wide. Now, one can access the website through ones mobiles (Android, IOS, Firefox OS etc.), through tablets, desktops and even smart Televisions either with an app or a browser.

With Indian Smartphone users growing from 750 Million (75 Crores) in 2013 to Four Times in 2020 the amount of Facebook/Twitter users through a Smartphone is sure to increase manifold.

The final verdict, social media is soon going to take place of word of mouth communication and slowly but surely, several nations will follow. One cannot pin high hopes for developed nations like US because of their current total population is 317 million and they cannot increase from 183 million any faster.

However, what one can pin on is that the number of users in Digital India is sure to increase. This is not because we just reached 100 million (10 Crore) Facebook users out of a whooping 1300 Million (130 Crore), but because we have just seen the power of digital media in influencing the world's largest democratic exercise.