[sdiy] [OT] Re: A major way to improve search engines. How can we implement this?

Mon Oct 27 00:27:19 CET 2008

>
>At 06:32 PM 10/26/2008, Bob Weigel wrote:
>(Preface  Rainer and I were having  a side discussion about this but 
>I think what I wrote below is pretty crystal clear.  Maybe some 
>didn't understand just how great this idea is.... not to blow my own 
>horn but hey... this would reduce SO many errant 'hits' on search 
>engines.  Do you all understand that I'm just saying DEVELOP A TAG 
>which allows well meaning users to START and STOP a section of 
>relevant context?  And in thus doing reducing the hits to their site 
>from people who aren't looking for context unrelated hits?  eg. 
>replace car keys and replacement synth keys on a site that has both 
>car keys and synths for sale...)
>
>Rainer...'wouldn't work' needs to be evaluated.  Obviously what we 
>have NOW is absolute unrestrained abuse.  Simply by the fact that 
>nobody is kicking off heinous pages (mine should serve as a GLARING 
>reminder of *that* to you :-) ) and there is ZERO mechanism for even 
>WELL meaning people to set their pages up so that there is 
>elimination of 'false hits'.
>
>So basically I'm saying it *would* work to the extent that well 
>meaning people who EMPLOY division tags would be AT LEAST ridding 
>the world of *some* errant hits.  WHAT IS THE WORST WAY SOMEONE 
>COULD ABUSE *this* PARTICULAR THING?  Ahem...by...NOT USING THEM!! 
>:-)  Any USE of them would be context limiting and would REDUCE the 
>hits of the page.
>
>WHAT SPAMMER WANTS TO REDUCE THEIR HITS??  hehe.
>
>Do you follow me?  . -Bob

Bob,
An example might drive home your point, so I'm not sure that I grok 
your idea, but I'll throw in some comments, anyway. ;-)

Search engines treat the page as the basic unit of content. 
Everything on a page is assumed to be related to one subject. You can 
only optimize a page for one set of keywords. If you mix "keys" and 
"widgets" on the same page, you can't optimize the page to get 
optimal search results for both keys and widgets.

Although your idea sounds interesting, it *is* subject to abuse, 
since you want a search engine to trust the contents of the START 
tag. Say that I have the following on a page:
         <subject="ARP Moog Oberheim synthesizers">
                 Minimoog
         </subject>
Is "Minimoog" an "Oberheim"? No.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Google was perhaps the first search engine to stop trusting meta 
tags. The Google PhDs saw that people were putting misleading garbage 
into their meta tags, so meta tags had to be ignored (or at least 
heavily discounted). What matters to Google is what a human would see 
(in theory) when looking at a page, how many sites are linking to 
this page and what are the ranks of those pages, and so on. (A 
complex formula that perhaps a few Googlites fully understand is used 
to create a PageRank for each page.) Anyway, Google cares not what 
you *claim* is on the page.

By the way, the HEADER tags (H1 through H5) were designed to organize 
content within a page, and Google (I believe) does apply their 
presence to its page scores.

Consider dividing up pages like
         http://sounddoctorin.com/synthtec/parts/key.htm#
to create a separate, search optimized page for each brand. I'll 
illustrate using Moog keys.

         Name the page "moog_keyboard_replacement_keys.html".
         Put <title>Moog Keyboard Replacement Keys</title> in the 
<head> block.
         Put <h1>Moog Keyboard Replacement Keys</h1> near the top of the page.
         Then, list all the Moog keyboards.

Repeat for each brand, and create a page for the miscellaneous 
brands. Have a section on each page (say, after the specific parts 
listings) that contains links to all of the other key pages, sort of like this:
         <a href="URL">ARP Keyboard Replacement Keys</a>
         <a href="URL">Moog Keyboard Replacement Keys</a>
         <a href="URL">Keyboard Replacement Keys, Miscellaneous</a>
This makes it easy for users to jump from brand to brand, and further 
establishes phrases like "Moog Keyboard Replacement Keys" as links to 
your pages.

In closing, please consider that people study this subject area, and 
many have jobs based on search engine optimization (SEO). People 
think about this stuff All Day Long. If there were a simple solution, 
it would likely be in use. You've gotten a lot of free advice! Just sayin'.

Hope this helps.

John