Dislike: search results from Google

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Dislike: search results from Google

Graham Perrin
At Nabble home <http://www.nabble.com/> when I search for something I expect to find matching forums ahead of all else.

The new style results, from Google, are extremely disappointing!
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Re: Dislike: search results from Google

Graham Perrin
Can you use the Nabble Latest Features area for both forthcoming and latest features? It will help to prepare for such dramatic changes.
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Re: Dislike: search results from Google

Hugo <Nabble>
In reply to this post by Graham Perrin
We know that google isn't perfect in this sense, but you can add the "forum" word to your search query. This will certainly make the forum appear at the top. We use google search because soon Nabble will have several different servers (n3, n4, etc.) and google can easily integrate this distributed search.
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Re: Dislike: search results from Google

Graham Perrin
Thanks for the tip.

Will the Google approach to searching become pervasive? Or limited only to the Nabble home page and thereabouts?

I ask because I really, really love the way that Nabble presents search results.
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Re: Dislike: search results from Google

Hugo <Nabble>
We will use google search only to find pages globally (across all Nabble servers). Internal forum search won't change and will continue to be the same (mainly because google can't search private forums and messages). So this will remain intact, don't worry.
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internal search (Lucene), global/cross-servers search (Google), and a general ramble about search results

Graham Perrin
Thanks for the reassurance :-)

Maybe update Nabble - Powered by... to include Google search alongside Lucene?

Part of what I love about Nabble search results is probably thanks to Lucene. The other part that I love — the clean, simple, minimalist, restrained appearance — is surely thanks to Nabble. The appearance lends itself extremely well to speed-reading and the minimalism is never a barrier to finding something quickly.

I recall reading somewhere that a magic number '3' applies to people's perceptions of Google search results. Something like: if the result is not in the top (uppermost) three, then that result may be overlooked or ignored.

What's interesting here in Nabble is that a higher magic number '10' (results per page) seems to work very well. All ten are easily scanned and when searching becomes complex, I never feel that I'm wasting my time. The absence of images certainly helps.

(In another environment (Diigo) I'm pleading for appropriate use of well-sized thumbnail images (echoing what I like about Glims thumbnail enhancements to Safari, and uses of thumbnails in many other environments), but the Diigo use case is very different; most content there is abstracted from web pages that have a 'look and feel'.)

Thanks as always,
Graham
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Surf Canyon in lieu of Google

Graham Perrin
In reply to this post by Hugo <Nabble>
Noting for the record that we now see results from Surf Canyon (not from Google) when searching from Nabble home page.

Still not as nice as Nabble search, but we can't have everything :)