----- Original Message -----
From: <CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 16, 1999 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: How to reach more classic computer users?
Here's where I'm sure someone can help me. If
anyone could look at,
for example, my DECUS freeware index at
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/decus/
and particularly suggest which META tags I might have to add again to
make this page (and the pages that it refers to) show up in search
engines, I'd greatly appreciate it! Back when these pages were
indexed by search engines, they'd get hundreds of search hits a day.
But now they never ever turn up, and I don't know why. I mean, the
pages still have the same information they always did, and it's not
like anyone else has a similar index on the web that replaces this
one.
Probably, you have to change some of the content of the HTML files, or just
change the creation/update attributes ?
Or put some keywords like "VERY VERY NEW OLD STUFF" ;-)
Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but it seemed to
me that a couple of
years ago the search engines did a very good job of finding a page
based on content. For example, if I knew a key phrase that occured
somewhere on a page, I could do an Altavista search for that phrase
(in quotes) and get a hit every single time. This doesn't seem to
work the same way anymore. Is it because search engines no longer
index based on content? If they aren't based on content, then what
the heck are they based on?
I noticed that too. I tried the same with known pages :-(
Cheers,
emanuel