Hiya Neal (and others)

As a counterpoint to your argument about search engines and small sites I have some real numbers:

From my website referrer stats: (For an Apache HTTP: http://www.eaves.org)

Direct requests : 28% Google.com : 1.5% Google images : 0.7% search.yahoo.com : 0.3% Google.ca : 0.15% Google.co.uk : 0.15% Google.it : 0.11% Google.de : 0.09% Google.com.au : 0.08% Google.co.nz : 0.06% Google.fr : 0.03% Google.pl : 0.03% Google.nl : 0.03% altavista.com : 0.03% au.altavista.com : 0.02%

The rest of the traffic is from a whole load of Java MIDlet portals.

Total search engines combined: ~4%

Now, I'm not running java.sun.com or anything like that but for a personal website I get an average of 30,000 hits a month, and I suspect that the only way that people find my site would be:

1. Signature links in email 2. Search engines

It's not like anybody is going to be trying to guess my URL just to see what is there ;-)

And the best thing is that I have a site that is just running Tomcat, on a wacky URL to compare this against: (Tomcat: http://www.eaves.org:28080/)

Direct requests : 55% looksmart.com : 15% eaves.org : 9% google : 6% search.msn.com : 5% yahoo.com : 1% google.ca : 1%

Now, I don't trust these numbers as much because the hits are so much lower 2000 hits a month, but it's clear in my case that there is no, or little "penalty" for whatever behaviour Tomcat might have.

Of course, YMMV, batteries not includes, offer void where prohibited by law.

Cheers, -- jon

neal wrote: