Firstly how can the Swaylocks search be improved by Google?
My understanding is that the Swaylocks search is searching all the Swaylocks posts by the use of keywords. Solutions to this type of search are already known and readily available. I can’t imagine how Google could improve this.
So, it seems to me that the poll is not really about improving the Swaylocks search functionality. If it needs improving, I’ll do it for free.
So if we eliminate the improvement to search functionality as a reason to involve Google then we are left with no change to search functionality but with adds from Google included in the search results. Huh? Why would we want that?
However, if Mike wants to display some adds that are linked to search terms to get a bit of revenue from the site then my opinion is… go for it! Mike deserves some reward for all the hard work he has put into this site. If Mike wants to change the domain for the search then that is also a different proposal.
I tried the suggested searchs on both google and sways. On sways, fcs, fin, box and eps produced no results as they were either common or too short. I would think that any search engine would allow you to specify the minimum length and the common words to be used. Finbox worked just fine.
Google no doubt has some very sophisticated searching algorithms, they need to to search the umpteen billion terrabytes of the web. Sways is a very small search area and I think you can get away with indexing the locaton of every word longer than 2 or three characters. The seach then picks up every reference and the usual boolean operators are used to qualify the search. How would google improve on that?
Google indexes the site and provides a slightly better search aparatus.
Click thru conversions earn this site enough funds to continue to sustain and/or develop more.
I think it’s honorable the Swaylock respects the user base enough to even consider our input on such matters.
I also think that there’s little chance that a google search box is going to provide the type of advanced search capabilities that this site sorely needs.
Ultimately, this is a free site that has provided invaluable information and inspiration…I can deal with some google ads in the search results list regardless of whether or not it improves search for the sole reason that I think Mike should be getting bloody fkn rich for this very unique and amazing community he’s fomented.
I also think that we could/should leverage some of the expertise of technical members and get some free development work; It’s one way that many of us could give back to the site that’s give us so much.
It would seem you have a very structured, dry and limited view of sql queries/database.
Which is exactly the way the search engine here operates.
I’ve 20+ years of adding business and people intelligence to database applications.
Why Google over the canned software available in this forum?
Because they do it better and offer it as a service so they can place ads and generate revenue.
A no brainer!
I could be wrong however, just an educated guess as to what their product can be.
All their data dictionaries, word equivalencies and context matching software
could have no more than a somewhat marginal beneficial effect here, but its worth it.
It would certainly come packaged to ignore common words like ‘the’ , ‘that’, ‘it’ etc. except in special context,
without obsessing about how long a word is.
Oh yeah and I want to search ‘pin line’ and get decent results.
Did you try “pin line” in double quotes? This worked fine for me. Using ‘pin line’ (single quotes) is not much use and pin line (no quotes) gives “Validation error, please try again. If this error persists, please contact the site administrator”
Google behaves in a similar manner (without the error though): when there is a space in the search words they are combined with an “or” (that is, look for articles with an pin or line but list the results with both first) even when placed in single quotes the behaviour is the same. Doubles quotes mean just show me results with both words.
I checked the first 20 or so results for the sways search and they were all good except for the the fourth thread “Do surfboard manufactures rip themselves off” which didn’t have “pin line”, no doubt the search was applying a bit of search “intelligence” for this one.
Basically, I’m just arguing to pass the time, as there’s no surf, again, and I’m bored shitless.
If google will take care of the indexing and searching for the site; and do a better job of it; and without any implementation or maintenance work from Mike; at the expense of a few targeted ads (that more than a few people actually find useful) then I think he should go for it.