Suggestion for search solution

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Apr 13, 2005 | 06:25 AM

Matt H.

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Suggestion for search solution

First of all, Johannas, et all, I truly appreciate your efforts on trying to impliment the AW search function up to this point. But let's face reality, based on what the issues are, I don't see it ever functioning correctly, unless you want to throw thousands of dollars at hardware and software to solve the problem. Let's also keep in mind that whatever works today will be working doubletime 2 years from now....AW keeps growing, and posts never go away.

Solution:
create subdomains for each forum topic, like so:
A4B6.audiworld.com
offtopic.audiworld.com
midatlantic.audiworld.com

I propose this solution because I searched for a couple of posts, that I KNOW have a couple of words in them, and I had to sift through 10 pages of results from google, only to find that the post had still somehow vanished into cyberspace.

In short, right now, Google really doesn't work as well as we'd like either, I think it could work very well using more subdirectories and obviously will hold up long term to suit everyone's needs.

Thanks for listening.

Apr 13, 2005 | 08:58 AM

- GT Style -

Lane Shark

Joined: Nov 2002

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From: BC, Canada

Re: Suggestion for search solution

There is subdomains already (sort of) https://forums.audiworld.com/feedback/<ul><li><a href="https://forums.audiworld.com/feedback/">https://forums.audiworld.com/feedback/</a</li></ul>

Apr 13, 2005 | 10:39 AM

Matt H.

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yeah google doesn't like that though

put in the search bar:

Audi site: forums.audiworld.com/other

You won't get any results. From what I can see, you have to stay with the domain or subdomain only.

Apr 13, 2005 | 06:03 PM

Johannes Erdfelt

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Please be patient

I've been coding like mad lately trying to get an updated search engine up and running.

You're right that Audiworld provides a set of unique problems, but I have a set of unique solutions up my sleeve.

Just please be patient. I hope to have something worth testing real-soon-now. At that point, I'll be soliciting feedback here.

Apr 14, 2005 | 05:48 AM

Matt H.

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No worries

I just don't want you to have to reinvent the wheel....it takes gobs of your personal time, possibly hardware/software expense. Not to mention scalability being an issue, AW will never be smaller. I can't see your membership and posting statistics, but I'm willing to bet your # of active members and/or # of posts will double over the next two years, easily.

But it sounds like you're close, good luck, let us know if/when you want to roll it out for testing.

Apr 16, 2005 | 04:02 PM

Chimpzilla

AudiWorld Super User

Joined: Jul 2003

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its really not the subdomain issues that would help google search and index AW

its the fact that audiworld uses frames that prevents google from easily spidering the site. Frames are entirely outdated a big road block for most search engine spiders. im sure due to audiworlds size and popularity google tries harder to spider the site, but the fact that most stuff resides inside a frame really slows google down, and causes it to miss stuff. audiworld already uses some subdomains. which you can see over at <a href="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=https://www.audiworld.com">alexa</a>. im sure these have helped in relieving some of googles spider troubles. i dont think we'll ever see a great way of searching this site, so i figure we'll just have to wait an see what Johannes does rather than hoping Google can solve the problem because I dont think its that simple.

Apr 19, 2005 | 05:35 AM

Matt H.

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Good points about the frames

That's an easy update they should look into.

I've been using the subdomains for google searching, which I also use to browse the site myself (always go to forums.audiworld.com/other, not www.audiworld.com/whatever).

I've also figured out that using google to search forums.audiworld.com narrows the search down to the forum posts...so I thought, easy solution = create more subdomains to divide the forums up, and use google to search those subdomains.

It really is simple....but it's a lot of data for any search engine to get it's arms around, which is why I question the value of Johannes' sweat going into reinventing a search engine when we know at least one works already.