Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-09-01 07:59:58 - Graham Ellis
I write "Korn Shell" rather than "ksh", and "regular expression" rather than "regex". When it comes to "new lines" there is a gap between the words - I don't write "newlines". I try to avoid using words like "today" as I write, as that leaves the reader scrambling for the authored date - on the same lines, I chuckle at the street name "New Road" in Chippenham, which is now attached to a street one of the more mature parts of the town.
All this is to do with the longivity and professional look of the site, but it does have it's down side - it's not all a bunch of daffodils. For search engines trawl our site, and index us under the words we use, rather than under the short hand and abbreviations that others use ... and where we should be better found, we may not be.
Analysing our log files (we use the Apache http Server's combined format rather than the common format), we can see the search terms that people used prior to following a link to our site. Where that search term contains a start= parameter, we're being told that this wasn't a first page hit ... and where someone has gone to the trouble to navigate forward from the first result page, it indicates a determination to find material that's not quite as easy to find as one might expect and if the search terms are ones that are indeed relevant to our site we should take a careful look at our wording.
I remember some of those English games at school that I was so bad at - making up a story with certain words or sentences in it. And I wonder if I should try that here - writing a blog that includes "Choosing implementing newlines save text rename today dynamic cpu display ksh regex" ... all of which are relevant words or abbreviations coming up on secondary result pages. The problem with THAT is that it might help bring people along ... but under the wrong wording.
If you have arrived here via a search, using some of the words that I have mentioned, you'll be wanting to click on one of the following links ;-)
All this is to do with the longivity and professional look of the site, but it does have it's down side - it's not all a bunch of daffodils. For search engines trawl our site, and index us under the words we use, rather than under the short hand and abbreviations that others use ... and where we should be better found, we may not be.