Please review 3PDF.com - Google search

I really like the fact, that every user query generated page, is saved on the server, as a static html page. This will help you in getting a lot of traffic from Google itself. Great Job!

 

I don't really save the html page (url is modrewrite), but only some datas such as the results of google search api (formatted as html, I prefer but I could have saved only raw datas), I really had to do that because if I was not doing it, sooner or later google will block my site and deny new request, this is to be expected.

Also I had to plan in advance for the way I was caching results, because if you put all your cache files in one folder, the file system will complain sooner or later too, so instead I created thousands of folders so that in each folder there will be only a few hundreds files instead of hundreds of thousands files in one folder.

Do you have an idea on how to add value to people visiting my site? Do you think a comment system would be somewhat useful or not? I can't think of anything I have to admit and I looked for inspiration on other search engines but didn't see anything I could apply to mine.

 

Nice looking site, and great concept to, the ads look great to, and you could probably make some money with affiliates as well.

 

Thank you for your comment, I already tried affiliates programs (cj.com) related to PDF (converters, programs to make PDF, acrobat reader pro, etc.) for about 2 weeks but that didn't generate a single sale, so I removed them. I also tried setting up a 300x250 box auto-generated with ebooks from clickbank based on keywords entered in the search box, I tried that for a week with lot of traffic but that didn't work either, so I reverted to using adsense. The affiliates ads were located at the top, not hidden.

 

I am curious about the site, if you dont mind me asking some questions.

1. How old is the site?

2. How many UV are you getting on a daily basis?

3. What type of traffic are you getting?

4. What kind of competition is out there for your keywords?

5. And last but not least, are you already ranking quite well for your targeted keywords?

I am only asking these because I am curious about the website, you have no obligation whatsoever to
answer if you feel it will jeopardize your website.

Thanks

 

The site is over a month old and gets a few thousand uv per day from google, I don't know much about the competition, I searched for other file search engines and tried to look for ideas to put in my own site in order to add value to the site but haven't found anything interesting. I want to add value to the site quite quickly because I'm afraid sooner or later google will put my site in a sandbox or desindex it totally, because a human reviewer will find it useless and spammy. So I'd like to add something of added value, like user interaction about PDF (so comments) but I'm afraid this strategy will only interest spammers and is not really useful to users since they only want to find PDF file, not discuss about them I guess.
About your question on keywords, I don't have targeted keywords except pdf files download and convert, but from the traffic logs the traffic is done on other keywords directly related to the names of the pdf files or their content, not on download/convert or even PDF file

So that's why I ask for a review here, in order to get suggestions to add value to my site, but so far I'm not successful, can you give me an advice?

 

You could create a blog on a subdomain like blog.3pdf.com or something like that, and add some unique articles on your blog, and some more user friendly things to make it more appealing to a manual Google review.

 

really nice site, and easy navigation! and looks nice too in mobile mode ...

so u r a great programmer too

regards ..

nb: btw how much your adsense earnings from site like this?

 

Yes the mobile version at http://3pdf.com/m/ is my first try at a mobile website, it simply is normal html but limited to simple tags. The goal is to keep the width short and the navigation ultra simple that's why the inside pages are so simpler compared to the full web version:
mobile: http://3pdf.com/m/download-free-free+2010+calendar+wallet+size-pdf-ebook.htm
fullweb: http://3pdf.com/download-free-free+2010+calendar+wallet+size-pdf-ebook.htm

I have setup adsense for mobile on this mobile site but they don't show on my windows mobile, and maybe not on iphone too, I don't have an iphone, but I guess they are displaying for some other configs because in my adsense stats I see some impressions and clicks on the mobile version.

About the earnings, it depends on the traffic, at the moment it is still growing but I can only give gross payments information as per adsense TOS, so let's say for this site it's good earnings compared to some other sites which need content writing work, sorry to be vague but I don't want to violate adsense's tos.

 

no problem ... just keep good work and maybe sharing another tips

regards

 

Looks spammy website to me ! You asked for an honest review. I hope you don't mind it.

Are you using Google API for it ? or You have developed the engine on your own ?

 

I don't mind at all any opinion. You say it looks spammy to you, but is it only because there are prominent ads on top of results?
I already removed all ads from the front page so that it doesn't look spammy/addy at all at least on the homepage.

As for the engine yes, I'm simply using Google Search API, it's a very simple process really.

Thank you for your honest opinion.

 

I have translated my site in french here: http://www.fichier-pdf.com it is exactly the same except that I query Google Search API in french, so the result pages don't have the same content when we input the same search query (that's also how it works between google.com and google.fr, not the same results for the same query) so it doesn't have duplicate content.

I didn't yet translated the mobile version, and from the results I got so far on the english mobile version I'm not sure it is worth it, very few searches in the month of december and for adsense for mobile I've never seen such a low CTR when dealing with adsense.

 

After using your site to search a few terms, it seems to be either hit or miss. Some keyword give me great results, and exactly what I'm looking for, while others are a long shot off. Also, as a personal peeve, I don't like to see a whole lot of ads right smack in front of me, before I'm able to view the content that I actually wanted to see (referring to the ads directly above the search results). None the less a useful site, and I do like the simple design.

 

Thank you for your feedback, I agree that the ads are prominent, but that's the price to pay if I want a good CTR on this page, I tried with a simple 468x60 at the top and a 728x90 at the bottom, but it doesn't work as well in terms of earnings. Do you have another ad placement proposition to make, one that would suit you better and also bring a good CTR?
As for the hit and miss, it's true that I tried some obvious searches which returned no results or totally unrelevant results, I guess Google needs to improve it's PDF searching capabilities
Thank you for your feedback, the simple design, especially on the homepage is largely due to the same thread I made on another forum (sitepoint) on which I've had great feedback and as a result I removed ads I had on the homepage and also simplified the look to a maximum, like they do on Google.

 

Well perhaps you could replace the top square ad with a banner sized 480x60 ad sense ad , so it's not so distracting, and to make up for it place more ads on the side in place of the unneeded features. The two things I found, in my opinion, useless were the 'recent searches' and 'popular searches' features you included on the side. I don't use them at all myself since if I wanted to search for the term I would have searched it myself, and they could be replaced with (you guessed it) more ads, which I wouldn't consider over-kill if you downsized the top ad. Not trying to bash your site, just trying to give you a helpful review, the traffic you receive is impressive

 

Thank you for your proposition, here's the problems I've found:
- I already tested the 468x60 on top and it was unsuccessful, very low CTR
- on the side the useless features (I know they are at most "fun" but not useful) are indeed very useful for my traffic, because it helps Google find and index new pages with what users are actually searching for. What people search on my site they'll also be looking for it on Google, so it's best if Google knows that such a page exists on my site for future searchers.
- I tried to balance the height of the side bar with the average heigh of the content area, so that it ends approximatively at the same place at the bottom.

What I've been considering is replacing the 300x250 by 200x200 which will win 50px in height, but the 600+ px width area will look quite empty with 400px width of ads with only 2 ads per block. So I don't know. I would happily put 300x200 ad blocks if I could but they don't exist in adsense anyway. Perhaps I'll decide to switch to 200x200 after all I could maybe use the 200 width place left to display links ot my other sites..
If you think it would help in user-friendliness and even maybe increase the CTR, I'll try it now and will see in a couple of day if the CTR has evolved.

Edit: I switched to 200x200 ads and added a 200x200 PDF file logo on the right, it gives some spacing to the design, I think it looks better, but now we'll have to see how the CTR and eCPM evolves..

 

very simple but nice site it is helpful site for searching pdf files

 

Good job with your site, congrats.

Comments:
- red color is too much, maybe you can try alternating row colors or something
- also it seams too crowded between rows, hard to follow, maybe a space line or dotted line between records will be nice (just my 2 cents)

Add more value:
- most people are interested in converting from PDF to WORD/TXT or similar and it will be nice if you add this function directly on site (for sure there are some easy to install scripts)
- it will be very nice if you can narrow search options like to search certain .pdf files on niche sites/categories:
For ex:
I want to search Paris.pdf only in tourism sites to find out city information or similar.
or
visual basic .pdf on article and tutorial sites not to have 1000s results and waist my time.

Hope this helps in your quest for better site and services for the end user.

Keep it going and have a great new year 2010.

 

write some kind of script if you can also i am not sure is it possible or not but,
Write a script or something that take to all writen things in the pdf file and generate it to a word file or txt file.. It can be usefull