Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions - FAQs

General FAQs:

What about FrontPage?

If you check the HTML source of this web site you will see it's FrontPage generated. Zeus works fine with FP and uploads the Link Directory using it's own FTP control. Note: If you are using the sponsored FREE version you must upload the directory once using the Auto Upload feature. This is the only way to deactivate the 14-day countdown.

Also if I purchase it can I use it on two of our sites?

Yes, Version 3.1.2 has a "New Projects" Feature. With this feature you can create a Zeus directory for as many sites as you want within the same program.

Is there an instruction manual with your program?

Help is available within the Zeus Application and we also have an extensive information Library available on-line in our support area.

Will Zeus work with all subjects?

Yes as long as a web site Theme or subject follows the basic Internet premise of reciprocal links. Web users surf fron site to site so it follows that information should be researched the same way. Most sites have links to other sites that are similar or match a theme. Bird sites have links to bird sites and so on. You might find a few Themes where the webmasters of that Theme will not allow links on their sites but these are rare. These web sites do not go far in the traffic dept. All in all Zeus works in every Theme we have tried to use him in.

What are ThemeSites?

ThemeSites are the web sites that match the keywords you trained Zeus with. They are what you are looking for. The information from these sites is what will appear in your Link Directory. These are the ThemeSites that you will be trading links with.

How does Zeus score a web site when he finds and determines whether it is a ThemeSite or not?

Zeus will score every site he visits using the Keywords you selected during training. Zeus scores Keywords higher when they are found in certain areas. They have a higher score if they match the words found in Titles, Descriptions, or META Keyword tags. The Webmaster who built the web site Zeus is currently visiting furnishes these. For example, a word you assigned Very Unique if found in the META tag will score the highest, while a Slight Unique word found in the page text will score the lowest. All the word scores are added and a total score is derived. When the average score for the web site falls below the Backout Limit, Zeus backs out of the current web site and goes on to the next one. As long as the average score stays high enough Zeus will stay and visit page after page until he reaches his Page Load Limit. (Default is 20 pages). He will then save the data he has extracted from the web site.

Do I install Zeus to my web site or to my computer I work at?

Zeus installs to your computer. He installs like any other professional piece of software. Installation is simple: Just double-click on the downloaded installation program.

Can you slow Zeus down?

Do I have to be on-line when Zeus is operating?

Yes. Think of Zeus as a database-driven, automatic browser. If you only have one phone line then you will have to run him at night. The largest and smartest Zeus in the world was built this way. Consistency is the most important factor.

Will Zeus work well on a limited site common to the free hosting scene, e.g. angelfire.com?

Zeus works well with ALL sites with FTP access. He is installed to your personal computer and does all his work there. You do need FTP access to be able to upload your Link Directory. You link pages will be 10K-50K in size for every Theme or subject you have.

Will the increased traffic on a small site crash it?

No. You will be able to control the rate of traffic to a certain extent. It will depend on how hard you work Zeus. After training, he will find 50-100 ThemeSites a day. You will email these sites daily with a request for reciprocal links. When they agree, the traffic starts immediately. About 10-15% will agree with each emailing (a lot depends on the content of your site, your design, etc. and remember you end up with a great Link Directory that they WANT to be in). In other words if you email 50 per day, you will get 5-7 agreements for reciprocal links per day. The traffic resulting from these would not crash a site, but if you started getting too many visitors, just stop sending requests to trade links until you get your own domain and a faster server. You will be emailing on a daily basis.

After 30 days you will want to automatically send a second request to all those sites that didn't take you up on your first request. Your second request would be going out to approx. 1500 sites (50 per day times 30 days) so you would receive approx. 100 -150 agreements.

The third request would be going to 3000 and so on forever until Zeus finds every site in the world matching your Themes. Then you work all of those consistently.

www.toolady.com was one of our original test sites and now has her link on 1/3 of the Bird sites in the world. Imagine the traffic she gets. Her site is growing at 80-120%% per month and has been for months. She claims she is getting more visitors than any other bird site in the world after only 5 months using Zeus. Her site was brand new and built solely on Zeus generated links. Search engines account for about 15-20% of her traffic.

As you can see the traffic is built up on a controlled gradual basis.

My ISP disconnects me if there is no activity for more than 15 minutes; is Zeus constantly communicating from "home" to other sites and back (so that the connection would stay open)?

Yes, Zeus is constantly working from your computer so he will keep your connection open. If the connection fails then Zeus will stop and wait.

If ran Zeus while sleeping or at work (as many users probably do), are there security concerns?

Zeus is no more of a security concern than leaving your connection open with your default browser loaded. Think of Zeus as an automatic browser.

Would there be a need for a firewall (or would Zeus even work with one?).

There are millions of people using the net every second without firewalls. Zeus does work behind a proxy server or firewall. I run my Zeus behind a proxy server as all my computers are on one network sharing one ISP connection.

Why does Zeus seem sluggish when I press a control button? Nothing seems to happen for a while.

Zeus may seem sluggish to you when you try to control him with the Control buttons. He will act on your commands at the appropriate time. When choices are made or buttons pressed, these commands are put into a cache or storage for action at the appropriate times. Zeus is not meant to replace your browser.

How can I view the images on pages being visited by Zeus?

You can set this in Zeus options. Click Tools, Options and then the advanced tab. However, doing this may slow Zeus down depending on your computer and internet speed.

Do you lose data if you close Zeus by clicking on the X in the upper right corner rather than going to "file" in the upper left corner and then selecting exit?

No. You can exit any way you want. make sure you are in pause mode if in the Find area. The Jet Database (zeus.mdb) is very well protected. About the only time something could happen is if your computer lost power while the DB is being compacted. Even if you lost power Zeus always checks the integrity of the new DB before the old is deleted. Knock on plastic, there has never been a database corrupted.

Link Directory FAQs:

I'm quite confused as to what Zeus creates and what I need to create as web pages. I understand that Zeus creates the Links Directory. However, is this just a URL or is it actually a page (or pages) that contain(s) all the theme sites with corresponding links to those sites?

When you make any changes of any kind to the ThemeSite database, changes are made only in the database tables themselves. This is where the data pertaining to your ThemeSites are stored.

When you select the "Create" option on the left nav bar a new screen will open. Here you can preview you diretory and upload it to your web site.

The Zeus program creates your complete Link Directory in the \links\ folder (click here for location). Zeus uses the information stored in the ThemeSite database, combines it with the Design Templates information to create your Link Directory in this directory. All Link Directory pages are created here and then uploads them to your web site using the built in FTP program.
After uploading, you can then view your Link Directory pages through the Internet, with your web browser.

I also don't quite understand the relationship between the "Templates" files in the Zeus files on my hard drive and the same files loaded to my site's server.

These are the files that create the design of your Zeus directory. (PRO version only) The Header and Footer files can contain any HTML code or text you wish. Most users copy the HTML source that is the Header of their web site. This allows you to match the overall look of your web site. You can start a table in the Header and end it in the Footer.

The templates create the directory structure, columns for instance. There is complete information on designing your directory in the help pages and our library.

How much customization can be specified as to how Zeus displays links pages, and how may these pages be customized?

I would like to make the pages more in keeping with my website's style, and I wonder how much or what could be changed.

Limited unless you have a PRO Version.

Can background colors and text/links colors be specified?

Yes, if you have a PRO Version.

Fonts?

Yes, if you have a PRO Version.

I want more control in the look of the displayed Link Directory pages?

You can control all HTML output if you have a PRO Version.using the design Templates

I'm not computer-savvy, and my web site was created by a computer-savvy friend on Microsoft Publisher, which converts regular text, etc. to HTML automatically. Would the Link Info URL be the same as the "index" page that Publisher creates, or is it, instead, a completely separate page that I need to create on my web site?

The Link Info page is a separate page you must create. This page explains to a Webmaster how to set up the reciprocal link to your web site. This page is placed anywhere you want on your web site.

Can I post the Link Info URL on the directory pages so visitors can access this information? If so, how do I do it?

It's done automatically for you using the information you entered into Zeus Options.

Finished my link Info instructions page but have a question on what is the correct way to link a logo. I've noticed some sites say copy and paste their logo and others are very clear in telling us not to do that. They say we should right click, choose save as, etc. Seeking clarification.

Both ways are doing the same thing. They want you to save it to your computer's hard disk, and then upload it to your web site where you can provide the image source link to it from your html code. The main thing they don't want you to do is leave it on their server and you setting up your image source link to use it off their server. Creates extra bandwidth for them. We suggest in your link info page you ask them to download your banner image.if yu have one.

Advanced FAQs:

Zeus keeps looking for the robots.txt, but returns a 404-error message because there isn't one. Is there a file that I need to put into our site for Zeus? And why, if I need to?

There are four Laws of Web Robotics and the second one states:

II. A Web Robot must obey exclusion standards and
follows the Standard for Robot Exclusion.

(Koster 1994b)
In 1993 and 1994, robots sometimes visited web sites where they were not welcome. Sometimes these reasons were robot specific. Perhaps a robot blasted servers with rapid-fire requests or competitors wanted to keep certain robots out of their pages. Other sites needed to keep them out of certain areas. Such as directories containing CGI scripts. A need arose and a standard was placed into existence. The widely adopted Standard for Robot Exclusion proposed by Martijn Koster is an attempt to address this need.

What Zeus is doing is requesting the robots.txt file from the current website's server and since the file doesn't exist, the server is returning the error message. This is supposed to happen. When a website has this file, Zeus will load the robot exclusions into the listbox at the bottom of the Data Window. As he loads each page to be visited in that website, he checks the list box and if a pattern matches, he goes on to the next page listed in his dinnerplate.

A Webmaster can control, to a certain extent, where robots are allowed to go in his website. Zeus follows the standards but you will find a lot of robots, including the ones from the big search engines, completely ignore the standards.

The following link will explain the robots.txt file in detail if you wish to add one. Standard for Robot Exclusion

You may consider adding a text file to your root server where the URL address is http://www.personal-planning.com/robots.txt

This file could allow free access to all robots and should contain:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Or just create an empty "/robots.txt" file will do the same thing.

How do I change the priority of different keywords? I made the wrong decision in assigning priority of my keywords

Use the keyword manager which is located in the Train job screen. The top buttons are used to display the keywords and after selecting keywords you may use the lower keys to change their uniqueness by clicking on the appropriate button.

I am trying to train my Zeus to look for Chinese culture related websites. Hence, I would designate the words "chinese" and "culture" as unique keywords (score 3 each). I also found out I could designate "chinese culture" as a very unique keyword (score 9) as well.

So how does Zeus score this sentence? "This is a site about Chinese culture"

Does it score is as "chinese" (3) + "culture" (3) = 6

Or does it recognize the keyword "chinese culture" and score it as a 9?

There are a couple of factors involved. See this in the Tools, Options, Score window. Notice the two sections, one labeled Word uniqueness Factors and the other labeled Source Factors. To understand how Zeus scores a word, take for example the default settings in these sections. If you have assigned a word a Uniqueness (Word Importance) of Very Unique, then the Word Importance of that word is 10. If the word is found in the Title, which has a Source Factor of 5, then the two factors are multiplied together and Zeus will score the word a 50.

In your example, Using the keyword manager I would assign "chinese" as Very Unique and "culture" as Slight Unique

I'm just getting 1-2 ThemeSites per hour (about the same on both a broad theme and a more narrow one). Are you using the default settings or something else?

I mostly use the default settings. The number of ThemeSites found per day can be greatly increased by lowering your Page Load Limit. The default is 20. I know Gail at toolady.com uses a setting of 10. I sometimes use 15. The new Zeus is extremely efficient in finding the pages containing hyperlinks and email so you can lower this. Remember that your goal is to find ThemeSites and really nothing else, so the least amount of pages looked at, the more ThemeSites, in any given time, you will find. If it's too low then you will have to be searching for email and there is the possibility he will not find enough new URLs to replenish the ones used. Zeus spends most of his time in each ThemeSite looking at the number of pages specified in Page Load Limit. If the site isn't really a ThemeSite then Zeus' time is being wasted.

He is only loading 3 pages in non-themed sites before backing out. This setting is in the Start Avg Score @ Page. This doesn't count the Robots.txt page. If you set it to 3 then he will load 3 pages plus the robots.txt page and so on. I do not know of a reason to change this from a 2 but it's there if needed.

Here is what happens when Zeus decides to score a site as a ThemeSite and what he does with the data when he doesn't.

Zeus first loads the home page and scores it, then the robots.txt for robot exclusions and then one other page. The third page he will try for is a link page. (Most webmasters include link, favorite, etc in their URL). He then scores that page as he did the home page. He then creates an average score and puts it into the average score box in the Data Window. You may change the page you want the average score to start at in the I If you want Zeus to stay a few more pages before he makes his judgement to stay or leave you may change this setting.

If the current website's average scores under the Backout Limit (Score Settings) he backs out and goes on to the next site not visited stored in his urls table in the database. He hasn't had time to really find anything but any email addresses have been stored. Any hyperlinks he finds he marks as visited as he assumes they are not what you are looking for as they were found in a site not matching your theme. If he ever finds these hyperlinks again in a ThemeSite, he knows they were never actually visited so he re-marks them for a visit. This logic increases Zeus' efficiency dramatically.

If he stays he loads the number of pages specified in the Load Page Limit (score Settings) 20 pages seems to be a perfect number of pages with Zeus. His main goal is to try and get accurate information about a ThemeSite while being fast. His goals are to find Theme links, email for you to mail the web site owner, and enough information for an accurate Link Directory listings.

Changing your Backout Limit will adjust the number of garbage sites you find. If he marks a lot as ThemeSites that aren't, you can raise it. I think it is better though to do the fine-tuning in the keyword manager by moving your keywords into more appropriate uniqueness settings. The keyword manager shows you the keywords Zeus used in scoring any ThemeSite. Sometimes I find it a help in deciding which Theme to assign a particular ThemeSite. If you are finding a particular type of website you don't want, you can discover which keywords are at fault and adjust them accordingly during the Approve job, click on the misc tab to seethe keywords scored

I've improved my keywords several times and that seems ok. But, over time it seems Zeus adds more off-topic sites, returning fewer ThemeSites. Once, I deleted URLs (kept everything else), started over with a new seeding, and things improved a lot (for awhile). I also tried very tight training (with URLs) after the URL reset, but after I went to auto, I started getting more off-topic URLs and fewer ThemeSites again. Is this how it works on auto or what am I doing wrong?

I have never deleted the URL table. If he starts returning fewer ThemeSites to URLs visited, then the only thing that can be happening is he is saving non-Themed sites as ThemeSites. He will visit those URLs found in those non-Themed as he feels he should since they were found in what he believes was a ThemeSite. This is why your ThemeSites found to URLs visited is getting smaller. On the other hand he will NOT visit URLs found in a non-Themed sites unless he finds it again in a Themed one.

Another important thing to do is to go through the ThemeSites Zeus has found every day. Do not let them add up. If Zeus marks a web site as a ThemeSite that shouldn't be, deleting it will also mark all hyperlinks found in it as visited so he doesn't waste his time going to them. If he finds one of these sites later in a real ThemeSite, he will remark it to visit.

In the "Find" area there is an option to Edit next 500" here you can choose sites you know you don't want Zeus to visit and set them as visited.

The surest way to help him make the correct decision is to use your Keyword Manager.

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