EA Forum posts are often hard to find through Google search
E.g., when searching on Google for “Long Term Future Fund,” this result only shows up at the bottom of the second page of search results, even after many user profile pages that seem much less relevant. Maybe this something that can be fixed in some ways?
I guess the solution would be to use the forum’s own search feature, but many people (including myself until just now) don’t routinely use that feature and prefer using Google search.
Another example: Searching on Google for “random funding max daniel effective altruism forum” doesn’t lead to this result, you have to search for “random funding max_daniel effective altruism forum” instead. I wasn’t aware that Google responds to the “underline” character, and it seems strange that it’s so sensitive to it.
Maybe this is all Google’s mistake, but I find this a bit hard to believe.
I’ve also noticed this occasionally; thanks for providing a specific example I hadn’t seen so far. The Forum’s search feature has improved since we launched, but I also use Google sometimes, and it seems like they should be able to index us well.
The tech team will look into what’s going on (especially with regard to the “underline” character response, which I agree is strange).
You might also try using Google’s Search Console to better understand how Google is scraping the site and what users are searching for (if you aren’t already using it).
EA Forum posts are often hard to find through Google search
E.g., when searching on Google for “Long Term Future Fund,” this result only shows up at the bottom of the second page of search results, even after many user profile pages that seem much less relevant. Maybe this something that can be fixed in some ways?
I guess the solution would be to use the forum’s own search feature, but many people (including myself until just now) don’t routinely use that feature and prefer using Google search.
Another example: Searching on Google for “random funding max daniel effective altruism forum” doesn’t lead to this result, you have to search for “random funding max_daniel effective altruism forum” instead. I wasn’t aware that Google responds to the “underline” character, and it seems strange that it’s so sensitive to it.
Maybe this is all Google’s mistake, but I find this a bit hard to believe.
I’ve also noticed this occasionally; thanks for providing a specific example I hadn’t seen so far. The Forum’s search feature has improved since we launched, but I also use Google sometimes, and it seems like they should be able to index us well.
The tech team will look into what’s going on (especially with regard to the “underline” character response, which I agree is strange).
You might also try using Google’s Search Console to better understand how Google is scraping the site and what users are searching for (if you aren’t already using it).
Here’s another example: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22SHOW%3A+A+framework+for+shaping+your+talent+for+direct+work%22
Hmm, this is what I get when I search for “Long Term Future Fund”:
https://i.imgur.com/oA62LTh.png
The post shows up right at the top in a list of results for the EA Forum. The same happens in incognito and Firefox.
For the other one, yeah, it does seem to depend a lot on the underline, which seems weird but appears to be how Google decides to interpret that.