06-17-2009, 03:05 PM
cidchase Wrote:That's all well and good. I notice that z is attracting some new international members. This used to be one of our biggest features, that we were so diverse in our membership.
I don't know that we are really less so now, but I just don't seem to see the posts from Spain, Portugal, Phillipines, Down Under, etc., etc. that we used to see.
One thing I know: if you go on Yahoo and search for model train forum, or forums, or model railroad forums, etc we are invisible. Even including "gauge" we are still invisible. If you include "big blue" in quotes we come in on page 2. I don't really know how these search engines look up their search terms or sort their results, but it seems like we could find out and use this to our advantage in maintaining and growing membership (assuming that this is a goal.)
So I guess this would be a formal request to our admins to investigate this and possibly make us show up in this kind of search!
I don't know about all of the search engines, but it seems to me I read a couple of years ago that Google decided to increase their revenue by selling priority on searches, so that when someone types in a search, commercial interests who paid the fees would find their site automatically at the top of the first page. If enough commercial sites paid, a non-profit like us would be relegated to the second or third page.