Wikipedia talk:Search engine test: Difference between revisions

68.154.104.124 wrote: 

First off I would like to know the purpose of this web page. It seems a little foolish that anyone can type anything that they want to see here! You know what that can lead to...don't you???

Indeed we do. But useful contributions outweigh vandalism by 50:1, so it's worth it. -- Karada 22:54, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

discussion of this, like any other page should be open. Waveguy

See wikipedia:replies to common objections

I added Alexa - thinking in terms of a general "external utilities" page. Martin 11:33, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

After retrieving the results from Alexa, how does one analyse how that subject has performed on Alexa? --Daniel C. Boyer 14:42, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I like the Alexa part, but not in the "fails the Alexa test" way. The Google test is enough imo. BL 18:00, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Alexa is a useful utility for determining the popularity of a website, but I don't think that popularity is a criterion that we should use in deciding whether or not to have an article on something. Articles are built up from verifiable information. Therefore, the decision on whether or not to have an article on a subject should be based on the amount of verifiable information there is about that subject. If a website is popular but nobody writes about it, we probably shouldn't have an article on it, because there are no independent sources to draw on for information. Conversely, if a site is unpopular but a lot is written about it, of course we should have an article on it. I expect there must be a high correlation between the popularity of a website and the amount of verifiable information on it, but that's just a statistical generality. An Alexa ranking does not in itself tell us a thing about the amount of writing about a website in individual cases. So I don't think we should use it. The Google test will give a much better indication of the amount of verifiable information, because it is itself a search for information. So I don't think we should use the Alexa test as a substitute. (Or, in summary: I agree with BL.) -- Oliver P. 03:58, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

BuddhaInside keeps adding "a quick check that an individual fact, within an accepted subject, passes the criteria of requiring 1000 google hits to avoid deletion."

This is not true and should not be added to the page or people will start deleting every fact that does get 1000 hits. Angela 05:44, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

Did you miss the discussion at Talk:List of nicknames for George W. Bush? That is exactly what Cyan is now doing. -BuddhaInside

Having a more stringent rule on a controversial page is different from adding the rule here and trying to apply it to everything. If no-one is objecting on that page, then Cyan can do that, but I am objecting to it being applied more widely than that. Angela 05:52, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)

If should be enforced across all pages equally, or not at all. -BuddhaInside

Not if there is a consensus (my definition, not yours) on one particular page to adhere to the rule. There are lots of rules that do not apply to all articles. Angela

As one who edits here without looking behind the curtain too often, perhaps someone could elucidate the origin of these tests. Who first suggested the Google test? (I'm simply trying to better understand the nature of the wiki and how these practices evolve, not questioning the practice itself.) On a related topic, why is this article on the Wikipedia rather than the meta? (I still don't fully understand the relationship, sorry!) -- A Profoundly Perplexed Paige

I can't answer the first part, but it's on Wikipedia rather than Meta because it relates directly to editing as it's sort of a tool for checking whether a page should exist. My personal understanding of it is that pages that are for editing are here whereas pages that are about editing are on Meta. Someone else could probably explain that better though. Angela 22:12, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

belatedly moved from VfD (sorry, Fridge):

• Wikipedia - relatively minor website, fails Wikipedia:Alexa test. Fridge 20:24, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • NB. Meant to be a comment about Alexa Test not Wikipedia! Fridge 20:25, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • Firstly, Wikipedia passes the Alexa test easily. Secondly, the article is about the project Wikipedia, not the website Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not just a website. Angela 20:41, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia:Alexa test says things about sites being in the top 100 and sites in the top 1000 (and also top 100,000). Wikipedia is not in top 1,000 (though might soon). OK Wikipedia is not just a site... but then most websites are not just sites: they are companies and people and projects :just like wikipedia is a project. Anyhow I wanted to say that some sites higher in Alexa wouldn't be in Wikipedia (like porn sites) but others lower than Wikipedia might be so Alexa is not a good test. Fridge 20:47, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • If you want to discuss the policy - go to the talk page of that policy. Trying to prove a point by listing things here really isn't a good idea. Angela 20:52, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

end of moved text

Please note, the policy says:

• we should have articles on important websites, important being defined as Alexa-ranked higher than some threshold (100 or 1,000)
• we should not have articles on unimportant websites, unimportant being defined as Alexa-ranked lower than 100,000
• nothing at all about articles on websites in the fuzzy zone between important and unimportant

-- Cyan 00:56, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Are there any guidelines as to how many Google hits a topic needs to pass? I just added a page on Mary Devenport O'Neill who gets 4 hits, two on Wikipedia, but I think she is important enough to merit inclusion. By the way, she died when I was a child, I never met her, and I'm not related to her, but she played an important bit part in the history of 20th century Irish poetry, my main field of interest. Bmills 17:02, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think the Google test is simply one of many heuristics use to determine if an article belongs on Wikipedia. Nor is Google the ultimate reference; it will skew to the popular and the general. Your entry seems a fine addition to Wikipedia. orthogonal 17:15, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I just started Balaenoptera omurai, which has 0 Google hits (take it as read that I am only VERY distantly related to this whale species) There are no hard and fast rules to the Google Test, and some contributors actively dislike it as a guideline because of its limitations particularly with matters of history. Pete 17:16, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Google hits just a guide. If you are knowledgeable in the field and say she is important, that should be good enough. Clearly not a vanity page, which is the biggest problem here with the obscure biographies (autobiographies). Also yours is well written (does not go into her pets' names, lifetime moves, childhood friends, etc.) explaining why she is significant. -- Marshman 17:18, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I only asked because the Google test is quoted so often on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. As a relative newcomer, I'm still feeling my way around these things. Bmills 17:23, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Re Balaenoptera omurai:

I have checked in Copernic Agent. There are 14 results:

One each in National Geographic and Nature

One Japanese, one Polish, one Czech, one Argentinian, one Norwegian

Seven German results
Dieter Simon 01:15, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's not surprising - the news about that whale species did just came out yesterday, so we are very fast to include an article on that. Right now google has 56 unique hits for that one, and the number will probably increase more. andy 12:41, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's only one guideline. It is perhaps most useful (but not limited to this use) for contemporary topics and for evaluating vanity pages. Daniel Quinlan 01:42, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. It does tend to get overused IMO. We don't want Wikipedia to reflect the bias already shown on the WWW, especially since a similar bias is probably produced by the demography of our editors as a population. But, both finding print media to cite, and verifying them when cited, are a lot more work than just typing a query into Google. Andrewa 03:23, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Agreed, Andrewa. My perspective is probably skewed by the fact that I've been making contributions around writers and writing and in almost all cases with those writers' books to hand. I also try to add external links to provide as much verification as possible, but sometimes this is difficult as with Mary Devenport O'Neill. And sometimes the information on the Web is wrong, or slanted. Bmills 12:05, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikpedia should be the means of getting lives on the web for which no other pages exist. If Google does not note it, thats all the more reason for putting it on Wikipedia! This is not a measure of their lack of importance, but more of the intersts of people who post web pages. As to who ought be noted, the index volume for the 1911 Britannica (not alas, included in the online edition), has biographies classified by subject, so the names of all the painters, all the engineers, etc, are in one place. The original Dictionary of National Biography is out of copyright now, but not on line. There are in-copyright biographical dictionaries which can form the basis for wikibiogrpahies to be written with just a little work Apwoolrich 13:27, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Alexa section points out that articles on certain websites should be linked to the corresponding entity behind it. But this makes no sense to me intuitively; the article on Microsoft has very little to do with microsoft.com, per se. What if the person looking it up wanted to know when the website was created, the design changes it's gone through, the extent of its resources, possible domain name conflicts, etc? The Microsoft article is certainly relevent, and should be linked, but a company is not equivalent to their website.

Derrick Coetzee 15:32, 4 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

This was copied a couple of times; it was originally on the Village Pump. Maurreen 08:04, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Google Scholar at http://scholar.google.com/ looks like an interesting new tool for research into scientific publications on the Internet. It is described as " Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research." At first glance, this seems to be far more helpful for finding relevant refences than other search engines. Please try out, and please give feed back. Should Scholar be recommended in our How-to pages? Kosebamse 15:21, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Does this exist?