Every so often, my colleague, Joe Feeley, editor of Control Design and Industrial Networking rares back and throws a great editorial. Recently, he did...on a word he coined, "Googlewhacking."
We've all found search engines of limited utility when we are looking for specific information on engineering, scientific, or industrial information...just search Google for "flowmeter" and see what junk you get.
One of his readers wrote a letter to the editor, and I think it is a brilliant comment, so I am reproducing it here:
I agreed in most all details with your op-ed piece. My take on the matter is that those of us who may have actually done some computer programming, or at least tried learning C++, Java, etc., understand it isn't always easy to program a task. What most other, non-technical people see is that the search engine is not giving them good service and returning what they asked for. This gives the search engine programmers a black eye - yet, is it their fault? I would have to assume they are reasonably skilled at their trade, else they would be greeters at WalMart, etc. I would guess the blame lies in the hands of the bean counters who say " If we let people put all kinds of keywords in their website to snag unintended visitors, we can get more money." If the search engine industry were driven by the actual internet user, this practice might cease, or reduce itself drastically. It doesn't take too many trips to the local megastore where you don't find what you are looking for, before you start going to a different store that has what you need. With your access to these industry leaders , perhaps you can get their ear. The advanced search features (Boolean terms) should get you closer to what you want without extraneous search specifications. On one recent search,. I had to add about 18 AND /ANDNOT terms before I got down to less than 10 sites I was looking for. Jim V.
What do YOU think?
Walt
