Amen, Brian. I did numerous searches earlier this evening, with the same results. This, and other problems, have gone on for way too long. I believe that Katie Glass is our employee, and is working diligently on these issues. What resources is Fathom applying to them? Bob -- W6RGG On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:18 PM, Brian Mileshosky <n5zgt@swcp.com> wrote:
Harold et al --
A number of weeks ago I had raised questions about searching on the ARRL website. Being proud of all the information on the website is one thing, but being able to search it effectively seals the deal.
The response received from Fathom was that after a few weeks the search engine will have crawled and indexed the site, and searching will improve. They also mentioned that text will appear in the search results rather than just page titles (which may have nothing to do with what I'm searching for). They also made some comments on the advanced search capabilities Google does so well.
It's been more than a few weeks, and I find even our basic searching to be worst than the old website.
Specifically:
-- Search any term and there's no consistent semblance of information. Just page titles, many times having nothing to do with the search term itself. A search on "repeater coordination" brought back the following results (page titles): 60 Meter FAQ, AM Phone Operating and Activities, Amateur Auxillary, Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, etc. None having to do with my search term. A search on "Field Day" brought back the following results: Yesterday Once More, RF Radiation and Electomagnetic Field Safety, Rquirements for Field Instructors, etc. Again, none having to do with my search. I can't believe that zero pages pertaining to Field Day and repeater coordination have been indexed by now.
-- Search results come back with a page title and a "Learn More" link below. Results should also show a snippet of information from within the page that was returned showing how the search term was used, such as how Google returns its search results. This allows users to pass up pages that obviously don't contain the term or phrase context they are looking for.
-- There's no clear indication that search results come back sorted in any fashion, such as relevance, or date. The results largely seem to be displayed randomly.
-- What's up with the "Learn More" link? I asked this in my first email, and it appears to be nothing more than a redundant link to the specific search result. Either feature it or lose it.
-- Searching "Duke City" and selecting the Hamfest category yields nothing, even though there is a Duke City Hamfest on record happening in my city this August.
-- Searching "Field Day" and selecting the Contests category yeidls nothing about Field Day.
It's my understanding that Google is being used for our internal searching, just as it was on the old website. I'm hoping that the poor results, lack of text snippets, etc is due to bad configuration somewhere and that Fathom indeed put the hooks into the site to allow Google to properly index and display results effectively like so many other organization websites. From what I see work still needs to be done...and if I see it, you can bet that this is something on the minds of our members who paid not only for appealing presentation of information, but an effective way to search information within it.
And if Google isn't used for our search engine, I'd advocate that it becomes it once again. There's a reason why Google has become synonymous with searching information effectively.
Can someone please comment on these issues, what's being done to resolve them, and in what timeframe?
I hope Jon Bloom doesn't get dumped on with this, as I'm sure he's beyond spread thin with other web-related things. Since Fathom responded to my initial inquiry about searching and those solutions are still outstanding, I hope that they will be expected to follow through or otherwise make things right in this regard -- using their own resources, rather than their customer's.
73, Brian N5ZGT ARRL Director, Rocky Mountain Division On the web at www.RockyMountainDivision.org