# Aquarank - Are you voting?



## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

OK...since I've joined this site I've been religious about hitting Aquarank every day (Including from work). Unless I'm wrong, you're supposed to be able to vote once a day and totals update every 10 minutes. I have a REALLY HARD TIME imagining there are only 7 votes since Sunday. I firmly believe Aquarank is AFU at the moment.

Do you vote? How many times have you voted since Sunday?

If you're up to it, I'd be curious to see what the difference is between actual votes and what AR says. So...please post here whenever you vote for APC on Aquarank. It's as simple as clicking the icon in the upper left corner.

--Mike


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

I hit it both from home and work daily too. Today is Wen and I've not been to work yet so incl Sunday thats 6 times.


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## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

I hit it twice daily as well. Unfortunately, something is wrong with AquaRank.


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

Art_Giacosa said:


> I hit it twice daily as well. Unfortunately, something is wrong with AquaRank.


 Thanks, Gnatster. I figured as much after asking you the same thing in chat a while back 

Art, do you know of a reliable way for users to contact the owner? I've got to think that if enough of us complain... After all, I can't believe a Portugese web site has 10 times the number of users of APC (currently #4).


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## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

I know Mark is trying his best to get up and running and get the bugs out. I've mentioned problems with AquaRank a few times before.

With AquaRank, the trick is to get members to vote every day, once a day. In so doing, one person will cast 7 votes per week at least. If just 10 members do this, you have 70 votes right there. As you can see, getting to the first page, even the top 10, takes over 100 votes per week.

The question people have is WHY vote? In my humble opinion, the answer is simple. There are a lot of folks that visit AquaRank that find our site because our members vote. Yes, many of these folks would be new to planted aquariums. That's the point. We were all new once.


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

I was about to hit every machine here at work and vote, but alas I asked the IT guy and we are seen as one IP to the world so only vote would count. Thought that we might see a difference if there were 400 or so votes.


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## IUnknown (Feb 24, 2004)

I used to vote religiously on the old format, for some reason I've stopped with the new layout. Maybe because there isn't as much of a push to vote these days.


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## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

IUnknown said:


> I used to vote religiously on the old format, for some reason I've stopped with the new layout. Maybe because there isn't as much of a push to vote these days.


 Somehow, I slipped into rut as well....


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## Osteomata (Jan 11, 2005)

Probably not a coincendance, but there is a discussion thread on plantedtank.net discussion the pros and cons of voting on aquarank. Apprently at least one well known site pulled themselves off aquarank for some reason.


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## pineapple (May 4, 2004)

In my "Google-centric world", Aquarank does not even feature. I find information about aquatic plants and communities via a Google Search.

Over time, perhaps, APC will appear on classic Google searches for planted aquaria:

Planted tank

Planted aquarium

Aquascaping

Andrew Cribb


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Andrew, 

I noticed that you are searching with Google UK, using the Google US gives different results, not a lot different but different nonetheless. 

Searching the same terms with Google Germany gives different links too. 

Unfortunately none of them have APC on the front page, even searching the term Aquatic Plant has APC on page 12.


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## MiamiAG (Jan 13, 2004)

Andrew,

SEO or search engine optimization is something I think about constantly. The words you indicated are search 5-16, 26, and 16-53 times per day respectively using popular search engines. As you will see if you run those searches, forums tend not to score highly with Google. Even relatively little known sites pop up way before forums do.

Some search engines such as Google penalize forums in a sense. They prefer sites with static pages and high keyword densities.

I continue to work on SEO. So far we have about 10,600 pages indexed in Google, 2180 in Yahoo and 3319 in MSN. As time goes on, I believe Google will better index forums and will be able to bring us higher in the rankings. At least I hope that's the case.


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## pineapple (May 4, 2004)

Ah ha caught out! A fifth columnist... ;-)

I have Google UK as a Home Page... partly because my family lives there...

Andrew


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

*How many votes from users vs. what the site says?*

OK...this morning when I voted APC had ZERO votes. Thanks to the magic of VPN's, I have voted from two different IP's today.

Let's see how things progress 

Edit: Second vote was significantly after first vote and AR still shows APC at zero votes and #64. Behind "Aquatic Plants Lucky Bamboo" at #57?


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

I gave up on it for a while too since it hasn't been working right since they had their little crash, and I was watching it for a few weeks there.

Someone let me know when it is working right and I'll start hitting it again.


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## Sir_BlackhOle (Jan 25, 2004)

I stopped hitting it as well because it never works it seems. I'll try it right now......hey it worked. I'll start using it again.


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Moved up to 32nd but still bogus, showing only 2 votes. I voted twice with the magic of VPN too.


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

I voted a few minutes ago, and it was showing 2 votes then too.
I don't get why the votes are showing for so many of the other sites, and seem normal.... Is it just us?


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Shows 4 votes now and up to 24th.


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## Phillyman (Dec 2, 2004)

I just voted. It shows six votes, all the way to #20. Woo-Hoo.Maybe into the top ten soon? I have not been voting recently as well. I will start to bang on it again.


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

I just voted again and we're up to #20 with 14 votes...

A little effort and I think we can overcome even the worst database mistakes...


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

We need to vote for APC... We are down to #46 :sad: 

We are to good a forum to be that low on the list!


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

trenac said:


> We are to good a forum to be that low on the list!


 I agree, but I also fully believe that the software is hosed up. I wish there was a way to contact the guy who runs AquaRank and ask him questions.


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