Karl Seguin

.NET From Ottawa, Ontario

Poor .NET search results on Google

I wouldn't mention anything, but I'm sure this problem is relatively new, and growing. It used to be I could search for .NET things via google and get a bunch of great hits in the first couple results. Lately though, I'm finding I'm having to scroll down or reword my search query.

For example, if I search for ArrayList the first page contains 2 .NET related links - in the 7th and 8th spots! Java stuff is everywhere else. I realize other frameworks have "ArrayList", but I'm sure just a couple months ago I was getting much better results.

Search for Math.Round and you'll find no .NET entries, java.sun.com is #1 again though. Same story for String Class.

This isn't a google issue either, MSN search returns very similar results. Java documentation seems to be getting indexed much better. What's up with that? Like I said, my solution is generally to append c# or msdn to my query.

While I'm on the topic, who the heck gives the System.String documentation on msdn2 a rating of 1? How can the average rating from 36 people be 3? Let people rate the documentation and provide comments (because I've found bugs before, submitted them and gotten prompt feedback) but don't display an "average" rating -my guess is that some Slashdot kiddies are having fun with you.

Published Jun 15 2006, 11:38 AM by karl

Comments

MSDN user said:

Probably because the .NET documentation is poorly organised. It takes far too many clicks to navigate to the information you need (the type's members are not listed on the type's page, for example). The navigation is performed by Javascript callbacks, which makes it hard for the search engines to follow the links when indexing.

And anyway, as loyal Microsoft users we shouldn't be using Google or MSN search. The search engine built into MSDN should be good enough for us!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha...

One more reason why Java is still way more productive than .NET.

# June 15, 2006 12:17 PM

Paul Wilson said:

Java's been around longer and is at least just as heavily used as .NET, not to mention there's probably a lot more cross-linking due to the differences in their community and ours. I typed in System.Math.Round and got plenty of .NET responses on top, as I did with Math.Round and .NET, so as you pointed out you just have to know your target is .NET.

# June 15, 2006 1:16 PM

moonjogger said:

Paul, you don't expect Java results for System.Math.Round, do you? :-)

Regards!

# June 15, 2006 2:07 PM

Jim Wooley said:

I typically search including "dotnet" in my search string. For instance "Math.Round" includes 1260000 hits, "Math.Round .Net" is 321000 hits. "Math.Round dotnet" is only 13200 hits. I like Paul's suggestion of including System as well as "System.Math.Round" is only 341 hits. You might check out Google Suggest (http://labs.google.com/suggest/) to see what kinds of hits you can expect there. It's a neat AJAX implementation as well. The main thing I find google better at than MSN search is the newsgroups. 90% of the time I find the answer to my questions faster and easier (and without as much duplication) by searching the google groups (usenet archives, including the old Deja News).

# June 15, 2006 2:12 PM

johnwood said:

Yeah it's obviously because Java has been around much longer (Java was first released in 1995, .Net end of 2001, so that gave them 6 years to create more web pages that link back to their documentation).

Besides, like someone else mentioned, just append something that would definitely only appear in .Net documentation. Personally i put c# at the end of every search request. Works fine for me.

# June 15, 2006 3:11 PM

karl said:

To Paul and John:
My point was that this wasn't always the case - I can't say for sure, but I really think that the msdn rankings have been going down lately. Maybe it's related to the split off between msdn and msdn2 -dunno. I'm sure that had I done Math.Round in google 2-3 months ago, .NET hits would have been better positioned...

# June 15, 2006 4:12 PM

Piotr Czarnas said:

Try this link:
http://www.google.com/microsoft
This is a google search screen for everything related to Microsoft technology. It should show .NET hits at the top.

# June 16, 2006 3:54 AM

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