I've been thinking that all the hits weblogs get from search engines usually don't result in the searcher connecting with the information sought because in most cases the information a search engine has seen on a weblog will already have been pushed off into the archives by the time the searcher comes along. I wish google would spider my archives and not my main page. Probably I could set up robots.txt to create this outcome, but because google ranks results based on an algorithm that pays attention to how many other pages are linked to yours, having google spider your archives (which it would see as different from your main page which most people would have links to) would probably hurt your search result positioning.
A different idea I had would be to look at the refering page when a page here is requested. If it's coming from google (or another search engine) you could parse the refering URL, extract the search phrase that was entered into google, and feed that into the search engine here to bring up the requested page, but with only those posts that mention the search phrase. Maybe the top of the page could be a standard explanation like: "I see you are looking for something specific. I've tried to provide you just that information. If you'd like to see this page as it would normally appear, click here."
At least that way all my "antrax symptons" searchers would find what they are, errr, looking for.
Oh yeah, I know, "that won't scale" but not everybody is trying to scale. Why not take advantage of unpopularity by building in more features then you could for a high traffic site?
If I was searching for "antrax symptons" and your page came up and I went to the page and the info wasn't on the front page, I'd look for an archive and figure out from the headings which were the most likely posts to contain a discussion of "antrax." That's why archive labels are critical, or they would be in my case if the search engines liked me, which (sob) they clearly don't.
Yeah, but you're smarter than the average bear. Do most people understand where to look? And if they do, do they take the trouble to make the extra clicks?
Not that I'm very concerned about supplying dubious information to people who can't even spell better than me.
And what's going to happen in 5 years? Well, hopefully we'll all be communicating in some sort of holographic 3d full motion on line world (or maybe we'll all just be psychically connected in a web of true love and global gaian harmony,) but just in case we're still using this crappy weblog system, won't it be the case that even the archive titles are too numerous to go through? Still, you're right, that is the idea.
That reminds me, I meant to include the ability to search titles from the advanced search page (probably should stick a title search box on the archive page as well.)
what are the symtoms as i dont feel good
If your spelling gets any worse you should see a doktor.
i went today and as usual its minor--but as i am off to Argentina (on American Airlines) i thought i'd better check....
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A different idea I had would be to look at the refering page when a page here is requested. If it's coming from google (or another search engine) you could parse the refering URL, extract the search phrase that was entered into google, and feed that into the search engine here to bring up the requested page, but with only those posts that mention the search phrase. Maybe the top of the page could be a standard explanation like: "I see you are looking for something specific. I've tried to provide you just that information. If you'd like to see this page as it would normally appear, click here."
At least that way all my "antrax symptons" searchers would find what they are, errr, looking for.
Oh yeah, I know, "that won't scale" but not everybody is trying to scale. Why not take advantage of unpopularity by building in more features then you could for a high traffic site?
- jim 11-13-2001 4:53 pm
If I was searching for "antrax symptons" and your page came up and I went to the page and the info wasn't on the front page, I'd look for an archive and figure out from the headings which were the most likely posts to contain a discussion of "antrax." That's why archive labels are critical, or they would be in my case if the search engines liked me, which (sob) they clearly don't.
- tom moody 11-13-2001 5:10 pm
Yeah, but you're smarter than the average bear. Do most people understand where to look? And if they do, do they take the trouble to make the extra clicks?
Not that I'm very concerned about supplying dubious information to people who can't even spell better than me.
And what's going to happen in 5 years? Well, hopefully we'll all be communicating in some sort of holographic 3d full motion on line world (or maybe we'll all just be psychically connected in a web of true love and global gaian harmony,) but just in case we're still using this crappy weblog system, won't it be the case that even the archive titles are too numerous to go through? Still, you're right, that is the idea.
That reminds me, I meant to include the ability to search titles from the advanced search page (probably should stick a title search box on the archive page as well.)
- jim 11-13-2001 8:20 pm
what are the symtoms as i dont feel good
- Skinny 11-14-2001 6:28 am
If your spelling gets any worse you should see a doktor.
- alex 11-14-2001 6:37 pm
i went today and as usual its minor--but as i am off to Argentina (on American Airlines) i thought i'd better check....
- Skinny 11-14-2001 11:48 pm