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22 Aug 07 - 06:43 PM (#2131496) Subject: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer As many of you know, we had a major crash at Mudcat in the summer of 2005. Max and Jeff worked hard to recover from the crash, and almost everything is working properly now. The restoration left a few glitches - some confusion of thread/message numbers, and some incorrect numbers on the Forum Menu about the number of messages in a thread. There is one thing that is still not working properly, and that's the Search function, which depends on an index. Since Max and Jeff still have some refining to do on the recovery, they have not updated the search index since 2005 - and that means that our primary search engine does not cover any messages posted since 2005. There are ways around that problem, and I've tried to spell them out in detail in the FAQ (click) - these workarounds are available on the Old Advanced Forum Search in the QuickLinks dropdown menu on almost every Mudcat page. In general, I think the best way to find a thread is to use the Filter to find by the thread name. But the workarounds aren't completely satisfactory, so I keep looking for new ideas. The most obvious possible solution is Google, and John Mehlberg and others covered that idea partly in this thread (click). I had some time today, so I went to the Advanced Search function at Google to explore our options. The "advanced search" allows you to seaarch a specific domain like Mudcat, instead of the entire Internet. If I use Google to search Mudcat for "Oak Publications," I come up with this (click) You don't have to go to Google Advanced Search to do a site-specific search for something. If you enter "oak publications" site:mudcat.org in the Google search box, you'll get the same results. Note that I put "oak publications" in quotes so Google would search for the exact phrase, instead of the two words separately. Also, note that Google apparently does not index ALL of Mudcat, so some things won't come up. OK, now I wonder if anybody has any other ideas for searching Mudcat in the lack of an update search index, or if anybody can do some fancy HTML and come up with something that would do a Mudcat-specific Google search. How about using Google for searching just the Digital Tradition? Any Ideas? -Joe- |
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22 Aug 07 - 08:10 PM (#2131547) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Desert Dancer Joe, when you say "note that Google apparently does not index ALL of Mudcat, so some things won't come up", do you know anything about what might be excluded? ~ Becky in Tucson |
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22 Aug 07 - 08:19 PM (#2131558) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer Thanks for posting, Becky. I was getting worried, because it was well over and hour and nobody had posted here - even though they posted to my @##$%^&* birthday thread! The reasons why Google doesn't index all of Mudcat are pretty technical - John Mehlberg explains it quite well here (click). I think it's playing futile games to try to coax the Google bots into indexing us better, but maybe not. Now, I've seen search engines (Google, for one) that will serve as a Website's search engine for a fee, but the price tag for a 104,000-page Website like Mudcat is extremely high. -Joe- |
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22 Aug 07 - 08:51 PM (#2131585) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Bill D I find Google indexing stuff I just posted a couple days ago....but it may have to follow links to get the older stuff....I dunno |
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22 Aug 07 - 09:21 PM (#2131612) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: The Fooles Troupe Google will only index threads that it has 'served with ads' too as far as I can tell. It DID index a few before the ads started, but buggered if I can figure out why... :-) Any thread now refreshed, or even opened that gets 'google ads' will now be indexed. Google indexes things on its own arcane 'relevance index'. I believe that threads accessed more frequently will score higher on this. |
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23 Aug 07 - 11:34 AM (#2132021) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: GUEST,Bob Ryszkiewicz Hi Friends: Other resources: CLUSTY, MetaCrawler, AltaVista, Ask.com, Dogpile, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa...If it's out there, they will find it... bob |
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23 Aug 07 - 11:56 AM (#2132038) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Amos CLUSTY MetaCrawler Alta Vista Ask.com DogPile Alexa Yahoo! Hope these are useful. A |
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23 Aug 07 - 12:29 PM (#2132055) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Nick There are a couple of tools that may help but I don't know whether the size of the site is too large - I'll check. I've also emailed a company who used to index a site for me but think they have a 10,000 page limit for their free tool (which works excellently) - I'm waiting to hear back if they have a facility to do 100,000+ and will let you know |
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23 Aug 07 - 12:36 PM (#2132060) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: GUEST,Sheila Thank you Amos. These are very helpful. |
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23 Aug 07 - 07:03 PM (#2132314) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer "CLUSTY, MetaCrawler, AltaVista, Ask.com, Dogpile, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa" are all very useful, in their own right - but can I use any of them as a substitute search engine just for Mudcat? Better yet, how about a search engine that can search a semi-permanent list of my favorite lyrics sites for a song, without bringing up all those crappy sites that are full of popups? -Joe- |
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23 Aug 07 - 11:47 PM (#2132485) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Bill D These days, no search engine indexes more sites than Google, although there 'may' be a couple Google missed that Alexa found..etc...but some of the meta-search engines will do Google AND some others. The left-hand column of Ref-Desk will get you quite a list. (and the trick is, Joe....stop the pop-ups and ads before they pop-up...I almost NEVER see them unless I ask to see them) |
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24 Aug 07 - 12:24 AM (#2132499) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer Well, Bill, it's not actually the popups that bug me. I do pretty well controlling them. It's the myriad "lyrics" websites with names like lyricsorgasm.com and the like. Many of them seem to be exactly the same - ad-studded pages with lists of clickable song titles, and no lyrics appear when you click. All you usually get is an invitation to submit lyrics for the song you seek. So, I'd like to limit my song searches to reliable sites. -Joe- |
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24 Aug 07 - 01:18 PM (#2132849) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Bill D oh, THOSE places...yeah, Joe, I often wonder what their goal is. The only way I know of to find lyrics is to submit a sub-set of known lyrics to Google, and see if anyone has it.....sometimes this leads to sites with larger collections; then I can bookmark those....and many now are GETTING their collection from Mudcat DB |
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24 Aug 07 - 02:40 PM (#2132894) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer Oh, they've been using the Digital Tradition for a long, long time. Way Back When, the UW Parkside lyrics database was thought to be the best there was, and there still are copies of that database available - you can tell from the formatting that all the "folk" songs came from the Digital Tradition, long before there was a Mudcat. I get a kick out of people who post lyrics here that came from another site's copy of our Digital Tradition. Hasn't happened lately - maybe people are learning. -Joe- |
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27 Sep 07 - 04:19 PM (#2158784) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer BK Lick suggested using the Fluid Dynamics Search Engine for searching Mudcat. You have to download a utility program that does the searching for you. BK Lick's advice is usually right on target, but I haven't tried this utility yet - I'm waiting until Monday, when I'm supposed to get a broadband connection. -Joe- |
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27 Sep 07 - 04:27 PM (#2158790) Subject: RE: Using Google to Search Mudcat From: MMario broadband! wow. I am green. |
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03 Oct 07 - 03:00 PM (#2162945) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: katlaughing So have you tried the one BKLick suggested? |
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15 Sep 09 - 03:48 PM (#2724320) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer Try this experimental Google Mudcat Search: |
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15 Sep 09 - 04:06 PM (#2724331) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: VirginiaTam well I tried Kittens in mudcattery to see if it would find my thread rules for kittens in mudcattery. Nothing zactly what's it supposed to do? |
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15 Sep 09 - 04:08 PM (#2724332) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: SteveMansfield Sorry, think I'm missing something here - but if I type a search term into the box ('rauschpfeife' since you ask), I get pretty much exactly the same search results, from across the whole Internet, as if I type the same term into google.co.uk ... |
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15 Sep 09 - 04:18 PM (#2724338) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer Try again. I had it set to search the Web, with primary emphasis on Mudcat. Now I have it set just for Mudcat. I see that Max already has a Google Custom Search in the search box on the Forum Menu and most threads, but I thought I'd experiment with it, too. -Joe-
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15 Sep 09 - 04:25 PM (#2724344) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: bobad It seems to work OK searching Mudcat. Can it be set so we have options like Mudcat only or Mudcat + Web ? |
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15 Sep 09 - 04:32 PM (#2724350) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: Joe Offer Well, setting options for users get scomplicated. As Virginia Tam and sfmans found, the Mudcat + Web option didn't work very well, so I changed it to Mudcat only. It's an interesting thing to play with, though. -Joe- |
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15 Sep 09 - 05:44 PM (#2724401) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: Jack Campin Would Bing have any advantages for this? I haven't used it enough to tell what it's got going for it that Google hasn't. |
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15 Sep 09 - 05:58 PM (#2724412) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: Bill D It sure worked fine for the two terms I tried, Joe.... and fast. |
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16 Sep 09 - 02:40 AM (#2724595) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: VirginiaTam I tried mudcattery again and then "lambs in the green hills" got the Mudcat No results page copy of the URL for the No results page below http://www.mudcat.org/@NewSSResults.cfm is that right? |
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16 Sep 09 - 02:55 AM (#2724600) Subject: RE: Using Google (& Others) to Search Mudcat From: SteveMansfield I wonder if it's a UK / USA thing, because I still get the same failure result as VT. [Even if you put google.com into the address bar it still picks up your location from your IP address and bounces you to google.co.uk] My usual method, entering rauschpfeife site:mudcat.org into the Firefox header Google box, produces 111 results ... |