>Cross searching is also something that we are investigating on the
>National Museums Online Learning Project. The problem with the Google
>Custom Search is that it obviously only indexes those pages that are
>accessible to it. If your online collection database cannot be indexed
>by Google then these items/objects will not be returned in the search.
>The deep dark truthful web is still hidden. I believe that at the NMM
>you have done some work with opening up your online collection database
>to Google (via certain methods) and thus making it more accessible.
>Would you say that you have noticed any particular increase in user
>sessions within your online collection (or referral from Google) since
>this occurred?
>
Our old prints & drawings catalogue
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/cgi-bin/empower?DB=prints_index99
Received ~300 visits a month, if I recall correctly.
We exported that catalogue to a new database, with a standards-compliant
web front-end, all developed by our web team here:
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/prints/
The new version, which contains exactly the same content, gets ~30,000
visits per month. Mostly referrals from Google.
I think the lesson is that if your content isn't in Google, your
visitors don't know it exists.
>I think that the key to using the Google Custom Search is to ensure
>that there are direct links to the required objects/items/pages via
>persistent URLs. Once this is in place, and with careful control of
>Google, all should be open and searchable.
>
Exactly my feeling, and the criteria by which I would evaluate any OPAC
or web-based collections catalogue.
Jim
Jim O'Donnell
Senior Web Developer
National Maritime Museum
Park Row
Greenwich
London SE10 9NF
DDI: 020 8312 6517
Fax:
email: [log in to unmask]
P please consider the environment - do you really need to print this
email?
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Please go to http://www.everyclick.com/uk/nationalmaritimemuseum and set
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