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
