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is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 1.Â
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Friday, 5th November 2010
Knowledgeble techie types read this messageboard so thought I would pose a serious question. At present it is no more than weak conjecture, but are there enough seeds of doubt for a conspiracy theory to germinate.
Is the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú not only failing to provide search of user content, but deliberately preventing effective search of messageboard or at least blog content relating to users contributions ?Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 2
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Friday, 5th November 2010
Obviously I thought I may expand upon that last question with a marathon post.
This is very much a topical subject, given its close relationship with the changes to messageboard currently being rolled out and shortly to hit ML. You will of course be aware there is the ability on OldLook ML to find users blog comments, almost directly from the messageboard. That has been lost on all recently improved NewLook messageboards.
Incidentally on NewLook boards I note the navigate by edit of url ( ) still works, but I do not think posts per page can be adjusted by the user using that. (It just changes unexpectedly all by itself, apparently a bug in the NewLook mbs )
_ Background _
1) sea change
Am I detecting a sea change in the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's attitude to users content and the ability to search that content ?
Going from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú being aware of the need and hoping to provide search facilities to the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú considering user content irrelevant, inconvenient, and burdensome and will not allow it to be searched.
2) search engines becoming less effective
And specifically are search engines such as Google possibly being restricted more and more from access. We do know Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú does take measures against search engines & crawlers.
A users search engine becoming unavailable could be seen as a sort of constructive dismissal.
3) simple example of users content not being found
As as simple example find try to find my blog comment about searching blogs & messageboards that contained the word "arachnahobia" fortuitously in this case my spelling is bad, with a double mistake. The comment is from Sept 2010. So easy to pin down with advanced search features within a time limit, and will very definitely have been indexed if it is ever going to be. The word is almost a googlewhackblatt, and until I wrote this post I am fairly certain it will be a unique word on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú site.
_ SEA CHANGE _
I am sure there is an awful lot of comment from the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú and from users. But whilst most fora outside the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú (at least in my subjective view) have improved and provided more features, and often good search facilities, the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú seems to be heading in the opposite direction. I will restrict my short comments to the situation at the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú with just a few brief examples.
I am sure users will all know of comments they themselves remember so here are a few I noticed (and can still find )
The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú rolled out its fancy new enhanced search nearly a year ago, and the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú blogger at that time did comment about searching user content Messageboard searching is on the roadmap for development. { "Matthew McDonnell is Head of Search, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú." - ] Â
We even got a hint of that very recently again from a Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú blog, this time concerning these so-called upgrades to the mesageboards: Additionally we are looking at various ways we can enable search across messageboards and blog comments. I'm not just talking about the Food or Archers messageboard, this is across all user generated text content across the whole Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú. { "David WIlliams is Product Manager, Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú FM&T Social" - ] Â
However the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú iPlayer faqs for example just tell users to do a general search with a search engine. Saying user content is not searchable.
_ SEARCH ENGINES_
Our own blog profiles, presumably produce a complete list of our posts.
They do only have an older/newer button
But an undocumented feature is the skip number may be edited as a navigation feature.
The current profiles presumably can not presumably use an edited url to give a extended long page of many posts that we can our own browser search function on.
It will be well documented on the messageboards some of the users/third party search & indexing (just look at 2000 post thread - ) but I imagine the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú is deliberately preventing search engines indexing users content on blogs
We have multiple levels of caching to prevent us being overwhelmed by search engines (bbc.co.uk receives 10% of UK internet traffic) and to stop them killing our ability to deliver content (and we also prevent spiders/web crawlers visiting us), so to enable search on our 250 GB database isn't a small feat. Â
I do note from (if, I interpret it correctly) one user "Peet's" comment that producing an index is not necessarily difficult or expensive - presumably as long as not too many bells and whistles. -
_ SIMPLE EXAMPLE _
The Arachnahobia comment by the way was in a rare blog where searching was an "on topic subject" by virtue of it being one of the subjects of the main Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú blog post itself
"Changes to Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Message Boards: Update
David Williams | Friday, 24 September 2010 " -
The misspelt word makes a good test text string.
Now I know I could find that if i scroll manually through my profile, if the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú does not cut off older entries, but I can not easily find it by any kind of search. (Guess I could download all the pages, and append them all to one file to search or something like that, but no even half easy method that I know of)
My comment in full complete with typos being:
4. At 11:48am on 24 Sep 2010, John99 wrote:
David,
I am glad you are mentioning specifically search engines, and searching and indexing messageboards in this blog.
_ Arachnahobia_
you ban spiders ?
Maybe you could clarify something for the technically less knowledgeable users like myself. You write in the main blog above:
and we also prevent spiders/web crawlers visiting us
The messageboards are of course indexed by external search engines, and the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú oficial guidance is to use external search engines. I would have thought that implies search engines do crawl your messageboards, or that you expose some sort of equivalent database to them. Maybe someone can explain what happens. (or other users post links to explanatory articles)
_ Message Board Titles List _
I have mentioned this before. A lack of Titles listing is a big drawback.
It would help if users could access a list of thread titles.
Especially if this could be something that in the absence of a Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú search facility could be indexed and searched with an external search engine.
Eg
if I wanr to search the food mb for posts containing the word
eggs in the title
Or I want to search the iPlayer message board for a named TV program or a software programme version
Or for instance OS, Country, Platform, or Stream specific problems discussed on the iPlayer mb.Â
P.S.
I doubt there is any obligation on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú to either keep or allow users comments to be searched.
Are there any guidelines suggesting this or otherwise ? anyone know ?
And what about the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's own official comments and replies within Blogs ? are they just throwaway comments that the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú does not wish us to easily find ?
P.P.S
I note user 'Russ' asks about the blog comments going missing from the 'my discussions' -Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 3
Posted by Sallyruth (U14589711) on Friday, 5th November 2010
Nope.
Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 4
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Friday, 5th November 2010
I guess this discussion is to be eclipsed by a turkey not understanding the significance of Rudolph's nose -
Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 5
Posted by Sallyruth (U14589711) on Friday, 5th November 2010
It seems to be a diatribe, rather than "discussion."
Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 6
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Saturday, 6th November 2010
Hi Sallyruth,
Thank you, at least you replied.
As you say "Nope" does that mean that you have found that recent user content of Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú blogs may be searched with an external search engine such as google.
If so would you care to provide a link demonstrating a workable successful search.
I do sometimes miss the obvious, and with the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú suggesting we use external search engines I would be interested to see how this may be done with users blog content.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 7
Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Saturday, 6th November 2010
Sat, 06 Nov 2010 17:39 GMT, in reply to John99
.
Suits me fine if they are, John99 - if I had been asked I would have chosen this policy. There have been several discussions in here about changes a couple of years ago which unblocked whatever it was which had hitherto prevented Google or Digibot(?) from searching the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú MBs. Iirc h2g2 was always searchable but the MBs were NOT ten years ago when I registered. Don't have a link to earlier threads, though I might find one later.
I would definitely prefer it if the MBs were not an open book to search engines - and I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in this. To be honest, I can see more and more advantages to the old Howerd2 system, which didn't keep messages in perpetuity.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 8
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Saturday, 6th November 2010
Hi petal jam,
Interesting. I would have thought, having seen quite a few requests for search facilities that users would want to be able to search for user content.
I know for instance on the food board that there appears to be a strong liking of an idea to be able to search the MB.
Possibly recipes etc on Food Q&A are timeless, whereas POV subjects are often discussing some ephemeral programme so maybe policies do need to differ.
I know one thing I dislike on messageboards is not being able to search the thread titles other than by scrolling through long lists in date order.
Don't have a link to earlier threads, though I might find one later Just the sort of situation where a search engine or other search facility could come in handy, especially possibly as I mentioned a search of thread titles.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 9
Posted by petal jam (U1466691) on Saturday, 6th November 2010
Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:49 GMT, in reply to John99 in message 8
That's very specific, imo, and relates to [mostly] factual information and advice. I was under the impression that a Food Board poster had set up a searchable database of featured recipes off board. It has often been referred to; every now and then a link is put up on request.
I rarely keep links of discussions - partly a goodish memory and partly becuase Mustardland discussions are famously never on-topic for long. So.. your vital piece of information or exchange might have come in a twist or an aside to a conversation with a totally different starting point. N&Q is the only board which truly attempts to stay firmly on-topic and non-ironic.
If Peet happens upon this thread he will explain the searchability thing - just as he did last time!¬) [We'd be lost without you, Peet.]Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 10
Posted by Tayler Cresswell - Host (U14232848) on Saturday, 6th November 2010
Hi all
I don't know the details of whether or not the boards have anything in place to prevent search, but I know that they're hoping to roll out search on the message boards in future.
I'm sure someone posted a while back some search facility that brought back results from this board. If I find the details, I'll post back here.
TaylerLink to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 11
Posted by Spartacus (U38364) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
Sun, 07 Nov 2010 10:03 GMT, in reply to John99 in message 6
recent user content of Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú blogs may be searched with an external search engine such as google.Â
It was something like nine months ago when the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú lifted the block preventing Google and others from "spidering" message board content. Postings made since then /may/ show up in Google searches, but I suspect they have deliberately slowed down access for search bots and spiders to prevent them from adversely affecting the overall system performance.
Thus, really recent posts may take a while to appear in searches, and "legacy" posts will only appear if they had links back to them. What you see on Google is a sort of "Fuzzy snapshot" of the more popular threads from between some weeks ago and nine or so months ago.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 12
Posted by Russ (U2360818) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
Old-style board header data contains the following line:
That prevents the bots from searching. New-style boards do not carry that meta line.
RussLink to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 13
Posted by Russ (U2360818) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
Sorry - the important bit of message 12 passed the preview parser but got wiped out in the posting. Here's what message 12 should have been:
Old-style board header data contains the following line:
[meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"]
That prevents the bots from searching. New-style boards do not carry that meta line.
RussLink to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 14
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
Hi Tayler,
but I know that they're hoping to roll out search on the message boards in future.Â
I did provide some links to Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú official comment. Do you know more than I noticed, that you can provide links to?
( I am not suggesting you provide insider info) From what I can see the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú recognises users want a search, says it will provide such , then sits back and does nothing, presumably the other message board changes having to take priority with your limited budget.
_ ML MB Searches_
Others have posted, and I have myself about searching MessageBoards, that can be done. Using the advanced search features of say Google.
It is then possible to reduce the vast number of hits.
I mention this in the Food mb long thread see my post number2385 in thread :
"Temporary Search Engine" -
You may note a link I posted on that page in msg#2361 will (without even using date filters) work well enough to return [currently]4 highly relevant hits
in a thread which obviously has more than 2000 posts in it.
GIVE IT A TRY ( )
[it takes a minute or two to go into action and return results eventually and redirects from lmgtfy to the true Google site, you need not do anything just watch it, - then finally click on one of the results if you wish to see what it found]
_ ML MB Thread Titles _
@ Petal Jam
Point taken, that threads go off topic.
I would also say at least on some boards thread topics get duplicated, sometimes it may be useful to find those threads, either to look up additional information from a duplicate thread, or before starting yet another on the same subject ( something I am clearly guilty of right now !)
A wide range of topics are covered and it could be useful to find specific subjects, and threads with whatever the subject is in the title are presumably a good place to start looking.
_ Blog Searches_
I don't know the details of whether or not the boards have anything in place to prevent search, Â
I think as I mentioned in the 2nd post that Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú does block searching of user content on blogs. I was directly quoting the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú in that post.
The accidental mis-spelling in the example I mention in post#2 does make a good test subject.
(as does the spelling of the title in this current thread as far as results from MB searches go)
Some user content including official Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú posts in blogs may (Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú posters are in that respect 'users') deserve to be better known e.g.
(Remember NewLook MBs do not give access to blog comments - something some mustardlanders will not yet have discovered - another of the 'improvements')
_ Food Searches _
At present a rather contentions subject, over on the Food Q&A, the use & CESSATION of the third party index/search being the longest thread on the whole board, the thread incidentally that I used as a demo above.
THANKS
Its nice to have somewhere to start a discussion that does not neatly fall into a specific category, and on many Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú locations would probably be considered off topic, here the host posts back trying to help.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 15
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
Peet, Thanks for the reply.
I have been getting the hang of the searches on mb s and the limitations. I can not remember but possibly the iPlayer mb was searchable earlier than some of the others.
The main point in this was really about the user content of blogs. I suspect that is still almost totally blocked from being indexed by google.
As a secondary subject, possibly not specifically asked, I was wondering if the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú would be able to make it easier to search by thread title, especially when forced to resort to using an external search engine.
Obviously the best answer is if the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú produces an index and searchable database, something that you commented on previously and in my post#2 above I linked back to. (ie )
Obviously your Blog comment would be unlikely to be found again by anyone who had not already read it. Also Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú comments within blogs are hard to discover if not noted at the time they are made.
(again in post#2 I link to some Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú comment)Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 16
Posted by John99 (U13871221) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
passed the preview parser but got wiped out in the posting. Â I guess you have been using an improved messageboard. Your message 12 shows up fine in 'F' view complete with tags, but not in 'NF'.
I have mentioned elsewhere the problem with the F NF views eg in reply to one of your other posts
N / NF differences is something that has been seen to be implicated in messageboard problems for many months.
The preview function still does not work as intended, despite or maybe because of, the last lot of fixes. But I am drifting off topic here.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 17
Posted by Russ (U2360818) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
I guess you have been using an improved messageboard.Â
It's difficult not to these days, John... (and yes, N and NF transfers and translations can be very confusing). As you say though, offtopic here in this thread.
RussLink to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 18
Posted by Tayler Cresswell - Host (U14232848) on Sunday, 7th November 2010
From what I can see the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú recognises users want a search, says it will provide such , then sits back and does nothing, presumably the other message board changes having to take priority with your limited budget.Â
Hi John99
You're right that the other message board changes and fixes are taking priority right now - so yes, search is in the pipeline but not imminent.
TaylerLink to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 19
Posted by Mustafa Grumble (U8596785) on Monday, 8th November 2010
Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:30 GMT, in reply to Tayler Cresswell - Host
FWIW, much as though I would like a search facility on the MB to be made available for registered posters only, if the price of such a search facility was that google & all the other search engines & data miners was better able to index threads, then I would rather we had no search facility at all.
As for blogs - well, I really don't give a toss: they are the spawn of satan and the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú website should not be hosting them.Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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Message 20
Posted by Spartacus (U38364) on Monday, 8th November 2010
Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:51 GMT, in reply to Mustafa Grumble in message 19
As for blogs - well, I really don't give a toss: they are the spawn of satan and the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú website should not be hosting them.Â
Although when the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú bought over h2g2 they had already been hosting "Journals" for nearly three years, which were really Blogs but just started a year or two before the term "Blog" was coined.
Link to this forum: is Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú preventing effective Google searhces ?
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