From openguides@downlode.org Fri Apr  7 04:17:32 2006
From: Earle Martin <openguides@downlode.org>
To: openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
Subject: [OGDev] Re: [OGL] Google searches
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 04:17:31 +0100
Message-ID: <20060407031731.GI16600@mythix.realprogrammers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20060403161652.GC11608@mythix.realprogrammers.com>
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Here's something that may amuse you. Four days ago I updated you on our
Google ratings. Then, as an experiment, I added the phrase "the free London
guide" to the <title> of every page. The results follow.

Search terms       Rank then   Rank now
---------------------------------------------------
london guide         46th        7th!!
london city guide    26th       27th
guide london         21st       24th
london "city guide"  23rd       25th
guide to london:      8th        9th
"city guide" london   7th        4th
"guide to london"     3rd        4th

As you can see, we're now on the first page of results for both /london
guide/ and /guide to london/ (this quoted *and* unquoted). Simply adding a
string to our titles has given us a massive boost from nowhere to front-page
for the most important search (london guide)! How cool is that? A salutary
lesson to other guides, perhaps...

Cheers,

Earle.


-- 
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


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From tom.heath@gmail.com Fri Apr  7 11:54:34 2006
From: Tom Heath <tom.heath@gmail.com>
To: openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
Subject: Re: [OGDev] Re: [OGL] Google searches
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:54:17 +0100
Message-ID: <fce623cd0604070354r6a435437jae6e1c39e358891@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20060407031731.GI16600@mythix.realprogrammers.com>
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Thanks Earle, interesting reading. This gets me musing again about the
use of keyword and description metatags in OG pages...

My firm belief is that we should really optimise the OGs to use these
metatags. Until blogging largely killed it, PageRank had made <title>
and <meta.. content pretty irrelevant in determining search engine
rankings. However, in the last few years we've gone back to almost
Altavista-style reliance on these factors, combined with a less potent
dose of pagerank. As long as the content of the <title> and <meta tags
relates to that of the page body then the search engines do take
positive notice of them.

Talking about this to Chris Schmidt he suggested (though without being
convinced ;) using the "summary" field to populate the description
meta tag. I've just implemented this on the  OGMK, so we'll wait and
see what happens. Two other suggestions for Guide admins/developers:

- Kill the "Home" in the <title> tag on Guide home pages and just
leave the site_name there. Position of words in <title> tags really
matters, and "Home" just doesn't cut it.

- How about a "tags" field in the edit page, for some
folksonomic-style tagging of pages? This would serve to populate the
keywords meta tag, and hopefully be useful in other ways, though I
imagine it would entail some fairly detailed hacking of the OG
codebase.

Hope this is useful in some way?? Thoughts welcomed :)

Tom.

Just for the record our home_node.tt now looks like this.

<snip>
  <title>[% site_name %]</title>
  [% IF contact_email %]
    <link rev="made" href="mailto:[% contact_email %]">
  [% END %]
  [% IF summary %]
    <meta name="description" content="[% summary %]">
  [% END %]
</snip>

On 07/04/06, Earle Martin <openguides(a)downlode.org> wrote:
> Here's something that may amuse you. Four days ago I updated you on our
> Google ratings. Then, as an experiment, I added the phrase "the free London
> guide" to the <title> of every page. The results follow.
>
> Search terms       Rank then   Rank now
> ---------------------------------------------------
> london guide         46th        7th!!
> london city guide    26th       27th
> guide london         21st       24th
> london "city guide"  23rd       25th
> guide to london:      8th        9th
> "city guide" london   7th        4th
> "guide to london"     3rd        4th
>
> As you can see, we're now on the first page of results for both /london
> guide/ and /guide to london/ (this quoted *and* unquoted). Simply adding a
> string to our titles has given us a massive boost from nowhere to front-page
> for the most important search (london guide)! How cool is that? A salutary
> lesson to other guides, perhaps...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Earle.
>
>
> --
> Earle Martin
>             http://downlode.org/
> http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
>
> --
> OpenGuides-Dev mailing list - OpenGuides-Dev(a)openguides.org
> http://openguides.org/mm/listinfo/openguides-dev
>


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From grimoire@sparky.ox.compsoc.net Fri Apr  7 12:05:30 2006
From: Dave Page <grimoire@sparky.ox.compsoc.net>
To: openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
Subject: Re: [OGDev] Google searches
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 12:05:01 +0100
Message-ID: <200604071205.12639.grimoire@sparky.ox.compsoc.net>
In-Reply-To: <fce623cd0604070354r6a435437jae6e1c39e358891@mail.gmail.com>
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On Friday 07 April 2006 11:54, Tom Heath wrote:

> - How about a "tags" field in the edit page, for some
> folksonomic-style tagging of pages? This would serve to populate the
> keywords meta tag, and hopefully be useful in other ways, though I
> imagine it would entail some fairly detailed hacking of the OG
> codebase.

There have been mutterings in the past about replacing Categories and 
Locales with generic tags. I for one think that it would be a good 
idea.

Dave

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From crschmidt@crschmidt.net Fri Apr  7 12:35:45 2006
From: Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt@crschmidt.net>
To: openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
Subject: Re: [OGDev] Google searches
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 07:35:26 -0400
Message-ID: <20060407113526.GD7655@crschmidt.net>
In-Reply-To: <200604071205.12639.grimoire@sparky.ox.compsoc.net>
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On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 12:05:01PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:
> On Friday 07 April 2006 11:54, Tom Heath wrote:
> 
> There have been mutterings in the past about replacing Categories and 
> Locales with generic tags. I for one think that it would be a good 
> idea.

I responded to this on IRC a while back, but I'll put it here for
historical purposes:

Tags and categories are two entirely different methods of describing
something. Tags are designed to be a personal representation of the
content that something contains -- 'fun', 'cheap', 't-accessible' -- not
a more general description of the content in question consumable by the
general public.

Categories and Locales are designed to be a more controlled selection of
data. They are roughly based on a pre-determined categorization method
-- to the extent that I take special care to keep category and locale
lists trimmed, since they are then used for selection by other users.

I am totally against replacing categories with tags. The use of tags and
use of categories do not match up. I do not have a problem with adding 
tags in addition to categories.

In general, I think the 'folksonomic revolution!11one' is crap. I think
that tagging is a poor solution to categorization. I think that it works
well in limited circumstances -- typically when you have an extremely
large userbase dedicated to tagging. I think that it's confusing to
non-technical users. I think that it only works even remotely well when
you can have tag suggestions for a 'thing' made automatically, because
otherwise people don't know what kind of other tags are in use. I think
that the idea of finding 'related' tags is difficult, especially when
you have limited tags to choose from.

But I understand the popularity, and in some cases, the apparent
improvement that such an oppourtunity would offer. But it's by no means
a silver bullet of categorization, and replacing categories with such a
thing would not be a good idea, in my opinion.

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer


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From openguides@downlode.org Fri Apr  7 14:10:36 2006
From: Earle Martin <openguides@downlode.org>
To: openguides-dev@lists.openguides.org
Subject: Re: [OGDev] Re: [OGL] Google searches
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:10:36 +0100
Message-ID: <20060407131036.GB17369@mythix.realprogrammers.com>
In-Reply-To: <fce623cd0604070354r6a435437jae6e1c39e358891@mail.gmail.com>
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On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 11:54:17AM +0100, Tom Heath wrote:
> My firm belief is that we should really optimise the OGs to use these
> metatags. Until blogging largely killed it, PageRank had made <title>
> and <meta.. content pretty irrelevant in determining search engine
> rankings. However, in the last few years we've gone back to almost
> Altavista-style reliance on these factors, combined with a less potent
> dose of pagerank.

God, it's like being back in 1997! You can't imagine how surprised I was,
actually, when I discovered that my <title> trick had really worked - I've
obviously been completely out of touch with the latest trends in searching.

> Talking about this to Chris Schmidt he suggested (though without being
> convinced ;) using the "summary" field to populate the description
> meta tag. I've just implemented this on the  OGMK, so we'll wait and
> see what happens. Two other suggestions for Guide admins/developers:

I think that's a great idea and have just implemented it in the
distribution. http://dev.openguides.org/ticket/97
 
> - Kill the "Home" in the <title> tag on Guide home pages and just
> leave the site_name there. Position of words in <title> tags really
> matters, and "Home" just doesn't cut it.

No kidding? Well, I'll strip it out of the template if nobody objects.
 
> - How about a "tags" field in the edit page, for some
> folksonomic-style tagging of pages? This would serve to populate the
> keywords meta tag, and hopefully be useful in other ways, though I
> imagine it would entail some fairly detailed hacking of the OG
> codebase.

I'm going to reply to this when replying to Chris's comments.
 

-- 
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


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