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thegrumpys / odop

Open Design Optimization Platform (ODOP) - Coil spring design app; mechanical springs; compression spring, extension spring, torsion spring
https://www.springdesignsoftware.org
MIT License
4 stars 5 forks source link

Create filter to pass only valid URLs to the app #664

Open grumpyinca opened 2 years ago

grumpyinca commented 2 years ago

Google Analytics indicates that there is a continuing stream of visitors to odop.herokuapp.com that have a mix of URL extensions. Some come in to / (root), a valid possibility. Others come in to /1 or other invalid URL paths. Google Analytics geo-location shows that essentially all of this activity of concern originates in many cities all across China.

Visitors with invalid URLs are slightly annoying because they are a distraction when it comes to gauging valid user activity. More significantly, this activity is listed in Google Analytics as being a "bounce". Assuming that Google is not compensating for this, bounces are a negative contribution to the page-rank algorithm. That is a concern that raises the priority of this issue beyond that of slightly annoying.

Today's discussions have concluded that it might be possible to make changes in server.js that pass only valid URLs. Thus, it is possible that the invalid URLs would filtered before being visible to Google Analytics.

This issue provides a branch for further investigation and the necessary code changes to pass only valid URLs.

grumpyinca commented 2 years ago

The attached .PDF doc shows a week's worth of incoming URL data.

AnalyticsWebSiteData20220328-20220403.pdf

grumpyinca commented 2 years ago

The current thinking is that we will make a first step at this as part of milestone 4.2.1. This first step will hopefully provide additional insights that can guide more steps in succeeding releases.

grumpyinca commented 2 years ago

Note that a query parameter of "/?msclkid= ..." is associated with Bing (Microsoft + Yahoo). So, don't filter those !