Luke Judge

Behold the power of Yahoo: A link at the top of the site’s front page helped send more than 9 million page views to The new York Times in the span of two hours last week, breaking records for web traffic at the newspaper. That’s per a memo sent to staffers this morning, which said the Times’ servers withstood the deluge “brilliantly.” (The piece to which Yahoo linked was a Home and Garden profile of a Connecticut home situated alongside a rail line feature on bargain housing in undesirable locales.)

But as we’ve seen with other news sites, the huge spike didn’t produce much advertising revenue — or, at least, not the copious coin you might expect from traffic at a rate of 7,300 hits per second. That’s because the Times could only serve cheap, remnant ads to its unanticipated visitors.

Deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman told me over the phone today that they might have been able to wring more revenue from the traffic if Yahoo had linked to an article in the site’s Theater or Small Business sections, where demand is much higher for expensive advertising sold by the Times.

I wrote about this quandary when The Wichita Eagle got a similar bump from the same spot on Yahoo’s homepage but only generated “a few thousand dollars” in ad revenue. There’s no easy solution here, but I still wonder if major publishers like McClatchy, which owns the Eagle, or The new York Times Co. could better prepare for selling ads against traffic spikes. one option might be forming an ad network of news sites expressly for that purpose.

On the other hand, a link from Yahoo, the web’s second-most-popular site, is a unique experience that may be impossible to anticipate. “We get lots of trafffic from Drudge and Huffington Post,” Landman said in our brief conversation, “but under no circumstances do we ever get a spike like this.” an excerpt from the memo by Landman and Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com, is after the jump.

Links from other sites generate traffic to ours. usually this happens incrementally, a little here, a little there, adding up over time. Every once in awhile, though, it comes with a rush you can almost hear, causing wild traffic spikes at the most unexpected moments.

On Thursday afternoon, Yahoo put a link in the “Featured” box at the top of their home page to this Home and Garden story. nytimes.com/2009/06/18/garden/18houses.html

In an instant, traffic to our site nearly tripled, breaking a couple of records: nearly 7,300 hits per second and 4.9 million page views for the hour in which the spike occurred, then 4.2 million in the following hour. That’s higher than anything we saw during the 2008 election campaigns, when the previous records were set.

It’s at moments like this when our technology is put to the test, along with the developers who build and maintain it. To their great credit, everything worked brilliantly.

UPDATE, June 28, 5:20 p.m.: I fixed my description of the Home and Garden article, which leads with a house next to a rail line but is more generally about nice homes purchased on the cheap by virtue of their unfortunate locations. thanks to Sarah Maslin Nir, who wrote the piece, for emailing me today with that correction.

cat-55e6 Raw Cables advertising revenue, breaking records, jonathan, line feature, million page views, news sites

Q: I have an alarming amount of faulty Ethernet cables. I have 3 that work, five do not. what makes it worse is that 3 out of 5 do not work are 50 “cables.

Is there anything I can do to save this cat 5 cable? should I cut / recrimp the cables? what would a requirement, a wire crimper and some plastic phone jacks all available from Radio Shack? Is there anything I can use for a test drive on the wires running to ensure that they are good and not the phone connection problem?

On nothing to do, I have a generic 5-port switch, where only the uplink / first port works, but none of the other ports do. Is there anything I can do to test / repair?best Answer: make sure ur modem is on if so make sure all the lights are green, if so, and it still dont work, then try unplugging all the cables and turnig the comp and the modem off. wait 10-20 seconds…. if still it doesnt work you may need to reset the modem, if you have the black one then there will be a little hole on the bottom, if you dont see it then the white sticker is still over it that says reset, remove that, if you have the beige looking and grey one then it is on the back, where hte cables plugin between the usb port and the the last ethernet port it has a thin red circle around it, after locating the hole get a paper clip and stick one end of it inside the hole the modem should then turn off then back on resting its self, if this doesnt work let me know most of the time that will do the trick if not msg me and we can go deeper into the problemCable Descramblers Plans get Free Cable.Re:you know, your only supposed to have 90 ft of CAT 5 running through the walls… but guess if you dont use patch cables it doesn't really matter.

P.S. wouldn't you want solid core UTP for long runs? When would you need a 50' patch cable?Easy Network WiringRe:Yeah NewEgg sells 100ft of wire for like $14! That is enough to do plenty of runs. Hell, I ran wires from 2 of my 2nd story bedrooms into my basement and still had some left over. but keystone jacks are a lifesaver. here is what I did:

1. Ran the wires (drilled a small hole from the inside wall to under the siding outside, tucked the wire under the siding, ran it to the corner of the house, tucked it down the trim piece going down the side, then drilled a hole under the siding, right above the basement concrete).

2. went to Home Depot (or lowes or any hardware/home improvement store), and bought 4 of those "after-construction" junction boxes (I think thats what they are called, but they are the blue boxes that go behind the drywall). with the after contruction ones, you cut the hole in the drywall, then stick the box in, and turn the screws on the top and bottom until the little metal spring opens up, and squeezes the drywall between the spring thing and the blue lip. (The before-construction ones are secured right to the stud, but if there is drywall up then that isnt possible).

3. Ran the wire through the holes on the top of each box, then went to radio shack and bought 4 keystone-faceplates, along with 4 keystone ethernet jacks. it takes about a minute to wire these jacks, and no tools (except the little included plastic thing) is required.

4. Hooked up the jacks to my computer and router, and "networked" away!

This is the best way to do it, IMO. Provides for a clean looking install, that will last for a while. I have done a ton of these installs, along with speaker and other cable runs. so if you need help with doing any type of run, shoot me a email/PM!

-JoshSolutions to Cat Behavior Problems.Re:usually the problems are the crimped ends. if you want to save as much of the cable as possible, then cut the ends off and re-crimp them.

Also, check if you rolled over the cables a few times too many with your office chair. or maybe they were bent around the corner of a desk or something and got crushed. you could probably salvage the non-crushed piece of cable.How to take Care Of Your Pregnant Cat.Re:if the cable is hard to replace, and it is a good time to buy a surface Keystone box and terminate the cable into the box.

Keystone cost a little more than plastic plugs but it is a much better bet for an inexpierence crimper and will last "forever".Ultimate Cat SecretsRe:the cables most often fail at the connector, so if they're installed in a difficult to replace location, try replacing the connectors first. obviously, for the few dollars that a replacement costs, I wouldn't waste much time on a cable that's not difficult to replace.Cat Training Secrets.Re:Unless you already have the tools, or just want to play, or are starting to make a lot of custom cables for some reason, it's cheaper to just replace the cables – good link from guy above this one.Food Guide for CatsRe:Link: Ethernet CAT5 Patch Cables. (cyberguys.com/templates/SearchProducts.asp?search=1ca&child=1zca62&curpage=2&ureq=y)Teach Your Cat to Walk on a LeashRe:guy, definitely the first thing for you to do is to chop one end, re-terminate, and re-test. if that doesn't work, chop the other, repeat. Terminations are most often the problem. if problems continue, then the cables might be bad or damaged, and the best thing to do will be to tie a new cable to the old one (overlap, hook, duct-tape) and pull a new cable to replace it. bad cables can't really be repaired, just replaced.

3 of 5 not working does strike me as an unusually high failure rate. I very rarely see bad cables. the terminations being the entire problem would not surprise me.I am Siamese (Cats & Kittens.Re:do you know anyone with a cable analyzer? they will tell you what and how far the problems are.Cat Health Secrets.Re:it is possible the wires are broken somewhere along their length. YOu could try putting new ends on, but it might not work. Related posts  

cat-55e6 Raw Cables radio shack, test drive