Re: More domain name confusion?

[Allin C. <cot...@wf...>]

I have listened to this discussion on this point, and here's my
take on it.  As is see it, some people are thinking in terms of
"what makes most logical sense" (with regard to domain names)
while others are thinking along the lines of, "certain sites have
high google rankings" (regardless of what makes logical sense?)
and we should aim to capitalize on that.

I certainly do not claim to have any privileged information on
what makes for a high google ranking, but I do agree that "we"
(advocates for gnuplot) want to "come up" on google near the top
when people are searching (without necessarily ever having heard
of gnuplot) for free/open-source graphing/plotting programs.

So here's a very basic survey, as of 2009-09-24.  (I'm assuming
that if you don't come up in the first 2 pages of google hits for
the search string the user has entered then you're more or less
invisible, though of course some people are willing to persevere
further than that.)

<survey>

(1) Google search: "free plotting program"
www.gnuplot.info = #2
gnuplot sf page not on first 2 google pages

(2) Google search: "open source plotting program"
www.gnuplot.info = #3
gnuplot sf page not on first 2 google pages

(3) Google search: "open-source plotting program"
Same as (2)

(4) Google search: "free graphing program"
gnuplot (in any form) not on first 2 google pages

(5) Google search: "open source graphing program"
www.gnuplot.info = #2 on second google page
gnuplot sf page not on first 2 google pages

(5) Google search: "open-source graphing program"
www.gnuplot.info = #3 on second google page
gnuplot sf page not on first 2 google pages

</survey>

One could vary the search strings to taste, but it seems to me two
main points emerge:

1. Clearly, www.gnuplot.info has much more google-recognition than
gnuplot.sf.net.

2. Gnuplot (even in the form www.gnuplot.info) is not showing up
as it "should" for some relevant google searches.

What follows?

(1) I would say, if we're interested in proselytizing (though, as
we all know, it makes none of us any money!), we should amend the
gnuplot home page (on whatever site[s] it subsists) to explicitly
mention the facts that gnuplot is free (as in free beer, though
not exactly in the Richard Stallman sense) and open source. And we
should also include the term "graphing".

(2) This is more speculative, but IMO google page rank is quite
dynamic, not necessarily strongly bound by history.  That is, I
think that _if_ the gnuplot developers (and I don't count myself
as one, I'm just an interested spectator) were to choose to make
gnuplot.sf.net the canonical site, then the ranking would fairly
quickly adjust to favour gnuplot.sf.net.

Allin Cottrell