Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Aun Johnsen (via Webmail)skipp...@gimnechiske.org wrote: There are millions of references to London on the net, while not that many of Pitlochry. That meaning a search for London might not give any OSM returns unless OSM becomes a featured site, while a search for Pitlochry probably will return a OSM link. To use Firefox autocomplete I usually do bookmarks like this: http://osm.org/?lat=56.704lon=-3.733zoom=13#Pitlochry http://osm.org/?lat=59.3211lon=18.0508zoom=12#Stockholm This is imensely usefull for me personally making it very fast to find my frequent places.. For that to work with search engines more people would need to use the same url.. How do you manage that? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:30:30 +0200, Erik Johansson e...@kth.se wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Aun Johnsen (via Webmail)skipp...@gimnechiske.org wrote: There are millions of references to London on the net, while not that many of Pitlochry. That meaning a search for London might not give any OSM returns unless OSM becomes a featured site, while a search for Pitlochry probably will return a OSM link. To use Firefox autocomplete I usually do bookmarks like this: http://osm.org/?lat=56.704lon=-3.733zoom=13#Pitlochry http://osm.org/?lat=59.3211lon=18.0508zoom=12#Stockholm This is imensely usefull for me personally making it very fast to find my frequent places.. For that to work with search engines more people would need to use the same url.. How do you manage that? Another thing that might help is if the OSM maps (www.osm.org / informationfreeway / other?) show the name of large places in the visinity in the title bar of the browser. This should be possible throughdynamic queries in the dynamic html generator (AJAX/php/other). This would make hits on OSM links rank higher in the search engines as it would be both a link pointing to Rome, and Rome in the title of the page it leads to. A metadata field in the html header can even improve this more. -- Brgds Aun Johnsen via Webmail ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
maning sambale wrote: For example, I search a POI in G and it points me to an OSM node. The simple answer has to be no. Unless the search engine finds links to follow it's blind. It will not fill in search boxes just to see where it can get. However if there are pages USING links to POI then a search engine will provide a link to that page, it will not provide the link directly since there will probably be no text matching the search? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk// Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
Lester Caine wrote: maning sambale wrote: For example, I search a POI in G and it points me to an OSM node. The simple answer has to be no. But the complicated answer is yes: in that I am working on the namefinder index to make it available through URLs (and a set of gazetteer pages). Though the first step is to get the index updated again, which is proving to be hard at the moment. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
David Earl wrote: Lester Caine wrote: maning sambale wrote: For example, I search a POI in G and it points me to an OSM node. The simple answer has to be no. But the complicated answer is yes: in that I am working on the namefinder index to make it available through URLs (and a set of gazetteer pages). Though the first step is to get the index updated again, which is proving to be hard at the moment. But that will only provide what you include in the namefinder? And given the crap going on in most search engines, it's unlikely the results will be displayed anywhere near the top with just a single text match? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk// Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
On Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:49:17 +0100, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote: David Earl wrote: Lester Caine wrote: maning sambale wrote: For example, I search a POI in G and it points me to an OSM node. The simple answer has to be no. But the complicated answer is yes: in that I am working on the namefinder index to make it available through URLs (and a set of gazetteer pages). Though the first step is to get the index updated again, which is proving to be hard at the moment. But that will only provide what you include in the namefinder? And given the crap going on in most search engines, it's unlikely the results will be displayed anywhere near the top with just a single text match? Google uses algorithms to vectorize how reliable a source of information is, and given its name and how it is built, namefinder might get a prety high score. I guess most modern search engines have the same approach as google to make the most interesting searches appear at the top of the list. Of course there will be a difference in the occurance of a big place compared to a little place. There are millions of references to London on the net, while not that many of Pitlochry. That meaning a search for London might not give any OSM returns unless OSM becomes a featured site, while a search for Pitlochry probably will return a OSM link. A wiki page describing the mapping progress of a place such as Pitlochry will even more increase that chance, and with even firther and more advanced algorithms, google can choose to group similar search phrases with almost identical possitions, so that it doesn't matter if the links to London points north or south of the Thames. The question then is how far have Google and other search engines come in enhancing such algoritms? -- Brgds Aun Johnsen via Webmail ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
Lester Caine wrote: David Earl wrote: Lester Caine wrote: maning sambale wrote: For example, I search a POI in G and it points me to an OSM node. The simple answer has to be no. But the complicated answer is yes: in that I am working on the namefinder index to make it available through URLs (and a set of gazetteer pages). Though the first step is to get the index updated again, which is proving to be hard at the moment. But that will only provide what you include in the namefinder? And given the crap going on in most search engines, it's unlikely the results will be displayed anywhere near the top with just a single text match? Well (a) we have our own search engine just for OSM, (b) we have minimal presence in search engines at the moment - having millions of referenced indexed pages will help increase our presence, and that's a virtuous circle. But that will only provide what you include in the namefinder? i.e. everything with a name (or other identifier like ref), which is all the useful ones. (Of course we already have URLs by number for every node, way and relation in the system, though those aren't usually exposed to search engines, and they include vast duplication, e.g. for streets with the same name split into multiple ways. They are useful for data scrutiny but not really for search engines). You can be defeatist if you like, but if we all took that view I don't think we'd be doing what we are doing in the first place. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:37 AM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.comwrote: i.e. everything with a name (or other identifier like ref), which is all the useful ones. (Of course we already have URLs by number for every node, way and relation in the system, though those aren't usually exposed to search engines, and they include vast duplication, e.g. for streets with the same name split into multiple ways. They are useful for data scrutiny but not really for search engines). I don't know what you are planning, but this is what I have in mind : Create a web page (html) for every city and town. Generate a header with info like the country it's in. Find all the suburbs and hamlets that are nearest to it and create a link for each one. Create a web page for every suburb, village and hamlet. Create a link to the nearest city or town in bold (if there are multiple cities at the same distance, create multiple links. Find all the streets that are closest to this suburb and create links for each one. The same goes for amenities. I think Google will index such pages. They already index a lot of garbage, like web proxy access logs, spreadsheets with address lists etc. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
Nic Roets wrote: On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:37 AM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com mailto:da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: i.e. everything with a name (or other identifier like ref), which is all the useful ones. (Of course we already have URLs by number for every node, way and relation in the system, though those aren't usually exposed to search engines, and they include vast duplication, e.g. for streets with the same name split into multiple ways. They are useful for data scrutiny but not really for search engines). I don't know what you are planning, but this is what I have in mind : Create a web page (html) for every city and town. Generate a header with info like the country it's in. Find all the suburbs and hamlets that are nearest to it and create a link for each one. Create a web page for every suburb, village and hamlet. Create a link to the nearest city or town in bold (if there are multiple cities at the same distance, create multiple links. Find all the streets that are closest to this suburb and create links for each one. The same goes for amenities. I think Google will index such pages. They already index a lot of garbage, like web proxy access logs, spreadsheets with address lists etc. That's almost exactly what I'm planning. I'll post some screen shots in due course. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
Create a web page for every suburb, village and hamlet. Create a link to the nearest city or town in bold (if there are multiple cities at the same distance, create multiple links. Find all the streets that are closest to this suburb and create links for each one. The same goes for amenities. You wouldn't need to create webpages, you could hook into redirects from the web server and grab the info in a script to produce dynamic info from a database, although I guess static pages wouldn't use as much load ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
David Earl wrote: Lester Caine wrote: David Earl wrote: Lester Caine wrote: maning sambale wrote: For example, I search a POI in G and it points me to an OSM node. The simple answer has to be no. But the complicated answer is yes: in that I am working on the namefinder index to make it available through URLs (and a set of gazetteer pages). Though the first step is to get the index updated again, which is proving to be hard at the moment. But that will only provide what you include in the namefinder? And given the crap going on in most search engines, it's unlikely the results will be displayed anywhere near the top with just a single text match? Well (a) we have our own search engine just for OSM, (b) we have minimal presence in search engines at the moment - having millions of referenced indexed pages will help increase our presence, and that's a virtuous circle. Exactly - people have to know to try OSM before they find the sites own search engine ;) Having had the search engines crawling the innards of my own sites - every page of history EVEN WITH NO FOLLOW SET - having millions of indexed pages does not necessarily increase presence, since they then ignore all the duplication and treat it as attempts to distort the search results! But that will only provide what you include in the namefinder? i.e. everything with a name (or other identifier like ref), which is all the useful ones. (Of course we already have URLs by number for every node, way and relation in the system, though those aren't usually exposed to search engines, and they include vast duplication, e.g. for streets with the same name split into multiple ways. They are useful for data scrutiny but not really for search engines). You can be defeatist if you like, but if we all took that view I don't think we'd be doing what we are doing in the first place. Actually it sounds like your reinventing the very thing we have been asking for for some time. What would be useful would be simply adding OSM references to one of the existing place encyclopaedias - something that is a little difficult given the current poor quality of place information structure within OSM ? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk// Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] can search engines index osm data?
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote: page of history EVEN WITH NO FOLLOW SET - having millions of indexed pages does not necessarily increase presence, since they then ignore all the duplication and treat it as attempts to distort the search results! Not the only reason why we want this. Google will become be a backup namefinder because you can search for edna pretoria site:openstreetmap.org. When Google detects these searches and clicks, it will adjust the rank (presence) upwards. Human behaviour carries a big weighting in search engine rankings. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
