I added a new way to sort your collection. It’s called ‘fast moving’ and basically equates to the difference between the current hourly sales rank and the sales rank from the previous day. The difference is displayed next to the current hourly rank in red text. Take a look at a screenshot:

If the current hourly rank happens to be null (this happens once a day as room is cleared for the next day’s rankings) or the previous day’s rank is null (this could happen if you just added the book–it has to be around for a day before it has a daily rank stored) then (0) is displayed and signifies that there’s been no jump.

This feature pulls from the Amazon.com sales rankings for now and doesn’t show you how fast your books are moving on Barnes and Noble or Amazon.co.uk.

Update Also be sure to check out the latest new feature.

I just finished pushing a fresh code update to rankforest.com. Included in this update are several bug fixes, many of which went easily undetected. They weren’t harmful, but they sapped the site of some of its energy doing unnecessary work.

I also added a simple update to the book battle view that lets you hover over an image and see its title. This was suggested by a customer who frequently compares many similar looking items and was having difficulty discerning between them.

This update also includes the site notification feature that I mentioned a previous post and is probably the reason you’re here, reading this post.

Most importantly, this release includes major performance updates. The main item listing view should be 2-10x as fast as it was. The detail pages for items was improved similarly. The charts were also the recipient of some optimization love. You should notice your charts loading faster (after the first view anyway).

I have more updates planned over the next few weeks but I wanted to make sure things were blazing fast first. Nothing’s more annoying than a slow site.

I spent a good deal of time testing the new features but won’t deny the possibility that I might have missed something. If you notice any strange behavior don’t hesitate to let me know.

While the blog is useful for discussing features and maintenance updates, I can never be sure that everyone has seen the latest posts. To make it easier to keep everyone informed, I created a System Notification feature that simply displays a message within your collection if any system notifications are available. To the right of the notification there will be a “dismiss this” link that fades the notification away, never to be seen again.

It’s pretty simple, but I’ll be using it to announce upcoming features and site performance upgrades.

Rankforest has collected nearly 2.3 million individual sales rank data points since the service began in 2005. If your book (or CD, DVD, etc) isn’t being tracked yet, add it using a free account.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I updated some of the libraries and system dependencies that power Rankforest. The updates were primarily aimed at fixing security holes, but there might be a small boost in performance also. I hope everyone that could enjoyed some time off. More later!

Tell her about it
Tell her everything you feel
Give her every reason to accept
That you’re for real

I watched an episode of Scrubs last night that was centered around those lines. They’re somewhat relevant here, anthropomorphically speaking. I put up a new site poll here. If you’ve got some time, let me know what features you’d like to see. If something’s not listed, please contact me and I’ll add it to the list or otherwise take it into consideration.

Oh how I wish a picture of me on my computer could have made it into Lyndon Stambler’s article on Amazon sales rankings. The article is an interesting look into the world of Amazon rankings. Though Amazon has dropped sales volumes, there’s still a lot you can get from the rankings, even if some is inferential. With Rankforest’s charts, you can gauge the effect of a bookstore promotion. And by using rankings gathered from Barnes and Noble and even Amazon.co.uk, you can get a better picture of how your book is doing.

It’s been awhile since the last post. I’ve been pretty busy the last couple months caring for our dog, who has lymphoma and hasn’t responded well to any treatments.

I’ve been mulling some new features based on feedback I’ve received recently. I’ll try to bundle it up into a poll in the next couple of days to see which things you’d find most useful. Nearly half of the site’s visitors (the other half is comprised of IE and all the other browsers) are using Firefox. I’m working on a new charting option that those using Firefox will be able to utilize.

A few small bug fixes/enhancements were implemented this weekend. A more friendly 404 page was added to help guide incoming hits to the new pages since many URLs changed. The most important change affects how the hourly rankings are reported on the chart. The mess I described in the previous post has been replaced with something more readable. The times are reported in EST for now, no matter where you are.

Currently, the numbers along the x axis of the hourly ranking charts don’t mean a whole lot. The first number represents the ranking gathered at about 1AM EST. From there it progresses hourly (if you have an upgraded plan) or every four hours. Let’s say you currently see rankings for 20, 21, 22, and 23 at the bottom of your chart and that you’re on the free plan with updates every 4 hours. The first number (20) corresponds to the first hour of data collection (around 1AM EST). It follows that 21 is from 5AM, 22 from 9AM, and 23 from 1PM. (This means that at 5PM, when the next update occurs, the chart will start showing the series 19,20,21,22,23 on the x-axis)

I have a more readable solution in the works, but the charts will remain that way for another few days.