[sdiy] why does google suck SO bad for finding my parts? Yahoo is on it!

[Rainer Buchty]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Bob Weigel wrote:

> With google...I'm not even listed.  At all.  4 pages of irrelevant links. 
> What is wrong with them?  Why are they the 'best' if they don't work worth a 
> crud on simple text stuff like this? -Bob

Uhm. Just out of curiosity (and because I found Google's ranking 
algorithm rather superior for the way I phrase my search requests) I was 
browsing your pages, and, frankly, I'm fully with Google here.

Where's your shop!?

It may just be me, but I somewhat expected to find it under "SD Shop", 
so I clicked on that.

However, there I find some text and photos. Shop photos. Studio photos. 
Maybe it's the "Synthesizer Assistance"?

No. I just find more text. A friggin lot of text, I might add.
But there's links to Manufacturers.

I'm sorta biased, so I click on Ensoniq.

Oh no! Even more text.
Maybe with clicking on one of the listed manufacturer products?
Let's click on ESQ1. Or SQ80. (Mind you, I'm biased.)

But, no. Still no parts but more text. And links.
(And incomplete citations from SDIY, I might add...)

But there's a parts locator, which by the link color tells me that 2 of 
3 links have already been visited. Ah, yes. They point back to the 
synthesizer page I'm already on. Loop, see loop.

So I go for "keys", cause that's the one I haven't visited yet.

Yeah! It seems to point into your key inventory page. So let's track 
back whether the main inventory page is linked from somewhere?

Oh, it indeed is. But I had to search for a while to find it as it's 
buried in your "Synth Assistance" page under loads of text.

I'm running 1600x1050 here and am not known for using particularly huge 
fonts (rather on the contrary), still I find that link somewhere around 
the second page of text disguised as "here's a link to help locating 
parts including [text...] some of my semiconductor, key, and misc 
inventory [much more text]"

And you wonder why Google, which does not just use a pure link daisy 
chain analysis but rather a more sophisticated, context-sensitive 
analysis does not find your stuff?

Even humans easily fail that Turing test you liked to set up with your 
pages!

To make a long story short: if you want your page content to be found, 
your page shouldn't play hide and seek with human and electronic 
visitors seeking for information.

Rainer