Hi Lars
(restricting the CC list a little, keeping the ML...)
[email protected] wrote:
Therefore it is important to see what happens if somebody googles
„GNUstep“. I did so and here are some results and conclusions.
Absolutely, I test this from time to time too.
For that purpose I include some screenshots in my mail. I know this is
usually not recommended but I want to explain my points using those.
At first, we’re doing not so bad overall, our (GitHub-hosted) website
is hit #1!
I think that is mainly up to the reason that GitHub is a well known
organization but also that this version of our website uses HTTPS!
Using duck-duck-go, I find indeed the GitHub hosted website then
home.gnustep.org, then wikipedia.
I think this is an issue, since the current website is self-hosted as of
now, we "switched".
Both version provide https, I too think GitHub has a "company bonus".
Then the wikipedia site follows, which is also not bad.
Agreed! but also dangerous
"Stable release: make 2.9.0, base 1.28.0, gui 0.29.0, back 0.29.0 /
May 6, 2021; 3 years ago“
This is very bad! It makes the project look like it was dead, „3 years
ago“! Didn’t we announce our latest release, which was not so long
ago, properly?
Also it says: „Preview release: only in the SVN software repository“
which is simply not true, we stopped using SVN quite a time ago. Also
this makes us look old-fashioned.
Wikipedia is good, but it also proves how much information is beyond our
"garden" of our own website and wiki.
Things changed since 20 years ago when each project page was the most
important part. So e.g. someone says we are "dead", I reply with current
wiki news and github commit, the other person might look at Wikipedia,
some software aggregator or something else, it is complex.
I just fixed the releases on Wikipedia...
I think the page could need a lot more.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_GNUstep
is not very rich :)
it finds our GitHub repo, o.k. but this hit should be further up on
the page. I don’t know what can be done about this since I am not a
SEO-Expert. But from what I heard more good links to the repo would
help here, maybe also improvements to the README.mds in those repos.
The GNUstep Wiki is a work in progress, so not to bad it is still
listed on the first page in Google.
It just came back online, so I it is cool to see it was picked up again.
Wikis are usually well searched, so important.
Now some images follow. From Wikipedia and from our website. All are
screenshots of GNUstep. Despite some people saying differently, good
screenshots on our website are important! Also not only „NeXT-looking“
ones but some with modern themes.
I don't think much can be do about the images picked by google, those
are context-dependent. Except publish more screenshots in different places?
The last part of the Google page shows a YouTube Video of GNUstep,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiimELyGnC4 (which I did not watch
yet), but wasn’t produced by us and seems to be about a GS-desktop, so
there is demand for such a thing. But this is another discussion.
Lastly, the „Related searches“ section follows. This should give us an
idea of what is searched for in relation to GNUstep: At first „GNUstep
download“: people seems unable to find our download page. Then some
searches in relation to different Linux distros but also „GNUstep
Windows“ seems to be an important topic.
Not to forget about „GNUstep Wayland“ and „GNUstep Swift“, there seems
to be enough interest so that Google put both into this section.
This is interesting, it probably depends on your "history", the Google
Bubble. I opened Google without being logged in and refused cookies and got:
"GNUstep GitHub" -> I suppose that people look for that in the search
bar, nobody uses URLs anymore
GNUstep Windows
GNUstep Desktop Environment
GNUstep Base -> (again quick search, I suppose)
GNUstep-make -> (again quick search, I suppose)
GNUstep FreeBSD
Install gnustep Ubuntu
OPENSTEP (yay!!! still there :) )
So, that’s it for today, I hope I could provide some insights an
directions for our website.
Difficult to interpret things, but a first glance at the related
searches and context shows there is quite some interest from "users" on
different platforms (e.g. various OSs) as well as possibly developers
(e.g. looking for GitHub or make/base).
Riccardo
