Curiouser and Curiouser! on search http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic search Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Finding a function call in a haystack Fri, 13 May 2005 08:12:17 +0100 <p>Via <a href="http://www.myelin.co.nz/post/2005/5/13/#200505132">Phil Pearson</a>, <a href="http://www.koders.com/">Koders</a> is a search engine for source code. For example a search for <a href="http://www.koders.com/?s=delegate&_%3Abtn=Search&_%3Ala=Ruby&_%3Ali=GPL">GPL Ruby code using delegation</a>. Quite specific.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002592.html So I do exist Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:01:04 +0000 <p>Some interesting things have been discovered since <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002087.html">yesterdays post</a>. First <a href="http://weblog.philringnalda.com/2006/01/09/another-google-loser-heard-from">Phil Ringnalda has observed that I am still in Googles index</a>. Phil who also suffers from Googlitis but is perhaps a little more sanguine about it observes that</p> <blockquote> <p>When your weblog is result 151 for your own name as a phrase it feels like you have been disappeared.</p> </blockquote> <p>He's not wrong. I looked through quite a few pages of results to find my blog but, never guessing it would suddenly be down in the 150's, I obviously didn't go far enough. Still, it is comforting to know that I am still in there somewhere. Thanks for spotting that Phil.</p> <p>Something I want to clear up about Phil's post is that my weblog was never really <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0148602/">here</a>. This is a test weblog I created when I was first tested <a href="http://squib.rubyforge.org/">Squib</a>, long after this problem began. I'm glad Phil pointed to it though because I had understood that Userland would have deleted it by now and I'm a little surprised it's still there. My original weblog was <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/">here</a> which does redirect to it's <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/">present location</a>.</p> <p>Over night <a href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/">Terry Frazier</a> emailed to ask whether Googlebot was still indexing my weblog. The answer is that it is, as recently as 4am this morning it went over the entire thing. Good suggestion Ter, but apparently that's not the answer. With reference to a lack of comments on this blog, they will be back soon in some form or other.</p> <p><a href="http://www.cristianvidmar.com/2006/01/10#When:4:04:34AM">Cristian Vidmar thinks I will never get back the No. 1 slot</a>. But Christian seems to be referring to a search for "Matt" where I was never the first hit (nor even on the first page). I'm talking about hits for "Matt Mower". You'll notice that the top for that search are, directly or indirectly, referencing me. Nothing <em>new</em> has become more relevant.</p> <p>So the situation seems more hopeful. If I'm not in the #1 I am, at least, still there at #151 and Google is crawling my blog regularly. This suggests that I, or somebody, did something to make this happen. If Googlebot keeps visiting then maybe it can be undone.</p> <p>So I am left trying to understand <em>what</em> caused my downfall and what to do about it. I don't favour a general de-emphasis of weblogs as Christian suggests, it's been two months already surely others would be bemoaning their rotten luck as well?</p> <p>And why do I think this is very important?</p> <p>Yahoo, MSN, and Dogpile all put my blog as the #1 hit for "Matt Mower". Yet I never even thought to look and see if it was a general effect. Rightly or wrongly for me, as I suspect for many others, Google *is* search.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003172.html