From: <pl...@pi...> - 2009-09-25 07:20:01
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Allin Cottrell wrote: > 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 > Thanks for the survey. A couple of points (I have done quite a bit of work on SE optimisation so hopefully these comments are more than speculative): google results are a bit like quicksand since they are always changing the algo to keep ahead of people cheating, however general placements usually don't move that much unless your are using some cheat that Google decides to penalise. PR is quite an important factor since it is reckoned to be one thing your can't really cheat. Sites like gnuplot.info that have a long history and probably thousands of external links can build a high PR. If such a site is redirected, google will generally reference the target and not return the site containing the redirection. This will add some kudos to the target but is unlikely to give it an equally high PR. Some work could be done on the content but the objective needs to be clearly defined in advance. One cannot optimise a page for too many keywords since increasing the importance of new words will necessarily decrease those currently pulling a good result. It's easy to do more harm than good if you already have good placement. Proceed with caution and make sure the objective is clearly defined before poking around. regards. Peter. |