Version: unspecified (using KDE 4.5.2) OS: Linux Google seems to be having difficulty with http://userbase.kde.org - anything short of "site:userbase.kde.org applications" can't find http://userbase.kde.org/Applications. Searching for "userbase.kde.org" returns userbase.kde.org/Special:MyLanguage/Mailing_Lists as the fourth entry. "kde userbase" does not have any links to userbase.kde.org in the top ten results. I know this isn't a kde issue, but does the KDE web team see this as a problem? Reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: Go to http://www.google.com and search for "kde userbase" Actual Results: lydgate.org/blogs/?tag=kde-userbase as top result for me. Expected Results: userbase.kde.org as top result. I'm sorry if I just got unlucky today, and google is to fault. But websvn.kde.org never turns up either, and so I often have several false starts when I'm looking for KDE sources. It made me paranoid about looking for kde in google. Bing works as-expected.
I'm not sure that it actually is a problem. Searching for the precise phrase "kde userbase" is not great, but omit the quote marks and you get "About 52,100 results (0.24 seconds) " which isn't bad. They are, of course, forum topics, other KDE pages that link to UserBase and mail archives that similarly link. Apart from the title bar you will rarely if ever see that particular phrase on UserBase itself, so I wouldn't expect the search to give the results you hoped for. I'd be more concerned if you searched for help on a KDE application and the relevant UserBase page wasn't among the results.
Having 52,100 results is nice, but I don't believe /any/ of them point to the English userbase.kde.org. I can't find any Google query that returns a link to the English userbase.kde.org. If I were looking for, eg, the tutorial on the Compose Key (http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey), then Google does not return any links to the userbase wiki, at all. If I force google to only consider userbase.kde.org (I used the query: site:userbase.kde.org special characters) then it does give me the page - in Brazillian, and whatever country has the ISO country code bh. If I search for that url (http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey), then the best I get in the top 10 is http://userbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Category:Advanced_Users&setlang=simple. I cannot find the English Tutorials page using Google (http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials). I don't think Google is indexing the English userbase wiki. If this is not something very specific to me, then no-one who relies on google will find the userbase wiki.
That may well be true, but with 52,100 references pointing to it, the site itself is not difficult to find. For seeking specific pages that you know do or should exist you'd be better off pulling up UserBase and searching there - that's why the search box is at the top of the side panel. The examples you quote, with the possible exception of ComposeKey, are not good ones. I can't imagine a real-life query that would reasonably expect to return http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials. No internal links quote the whole address. 1) Please give real-life examples of searches a new user might try that do not get a UserBase reference somewhere in the first 2 pages of returned results. 2) Please make suggestions as to how you believe the situation can be improved, bearing in mind that these are wiki pages, not html web pages.
When I filed this bug, I was hoping that someone would have access to Google Analytics, and check it to confirm that either: a) there was a problem with the Userbase's pagerank or b) I'm just bad at googling, with a counter-example links:userbase.kde.org suggests that the userbase wiki is mostly invisible to google. I don't think a reasonable search exists that will find content on the userbase. For reference, I think the KDE userbase should be in the top ten (if it were being indexed properly) for queries like: KDE Compose Key KDE tweaking plasma KDE Krunner KDE Mouse Gestures troubleshooting phonon I bookmarked http://userbase.kde.org/Phonon because I've had trouble with phonon and never seen this page before when looking for information. If these queries are not good enough, can you suggest an example where google will return an English page from the userbase? I talked to a friend who suggested that adding http://userbase.kde.org/Phonon and <meta name="keywords" content="KDE, User base"> might help, but really someone had to look at Google Analytics.
It seems that our sysadmins had needed to block googlebot at Apache level, because it was swamping the server. We are experimenting at the moment, to see whether it is possible to leave this open. If the server is swamped again it will be necessary to replace the block. We can only wait and see.
Ok, thankyou. :)