The MatriX Files » Site search

Carnegie Middle East Center Bilingual Web site

cdwyer — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:00:41 +0000

Matrix Group recently worked with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to launch a bilingual Web site for the organization’s Middle East Center. To communicate with its multilingual audience, Carnegie needed to enhance its Web site to provide content in both Arabic and English.

Our work included:

An enhanced Content Management System, allowing Center staff to post content in both Arabic and English
Incorporation of a filter in the site search to allow visitors to search by language
Web friendly display pages to account for right-to-left reading

Visit the Carnegie Middle East Center Web site

Have You Googled Your Name Lately?

jpineda — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:42:54 +0000

One of the goals of the last redesign of the Matrix Group Web site was to make my bio more prominent in search engines. I had previously resisted putting any information about me on the Web site for a variety of reasons, but my new biz team reasoned that since I do a lot of speaking and writing, people will Google my name; when that happens, we want the Matrix Group Web site to pop-up on the first page, if not first on the list of results.

I typed “joanna pineda” into Google tonight and this is what I found:

An interview that I did for The Washington Post back in 2003 is the number one result. This makes sense, given The Post’s Google page rank. Here’s a wikipedia page on how Google page rank works.
This blog, The Matrix Files, is the 3rd listing. This is great, exactly what we wanted. The blog strategy is working.
The About Joanna Pineda page on the Matrix Group Web site is the 4th listing. Fabulous.

So far, so good, but wait, here’s some bad stuff that I found:

My “public” Facebook profile included a list of my “friends.” I was very surprised because I was positive that I had made my profile viewable only by friends. I quickly found the search setting and made only the existence of my Facebook profile public.
Jigsaw.com has me correctly affiliated with Matrix Group International, but it lists Stephen Brown as the CEO. Aaargh. We have tried numerous times to get this listing corrected, but to no avail. Time to try again.
Spoke.com has me correctly affiliated with Matrix Group International, but it lists random people I don’t know as my General Manager and Operations Manager. It’s going to be a challenge to get that listing corrected.
Huffington Post shows the corner where I live and that I donated $500 to the 2008 presidential election. So much for paying the phone company for a private listing and being super careful to always use my work address on applications.

So what’s the lesson here? I’m not actually sure because so much of our lives are public these days. Heck, many of us do a lot of the broadcasting deliberately through blogs and social network sites. But I do know that it’s important to review what the Web is saying about you on a regular basis because you never know who is going to google your name.

BTW, check out some new additions to my blog, including:

New project profiles in the footer
A feed of photos from the Matrix Group Flickr feed on the right
A feed of bookmarks from the Matrix Group Ma.gnolia account on the right
My latest Twitter post

Yeah, I know, I blog, I tweet, I’m on Facebook and I’m complaining about what you can find out about me on Google. Silly me.

Where Do Broken Web Pages Go? The Internet Library, Of Course

jpineda — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:27:55 +0000

Whitney Houston sings “Where do broken hearts go?” Me, I have often wondered what becomes of broken or lost Web pages — you know, the URLs that used to work but now display a 404 or file not found error. Are these pages deleted from the servers? Or have they just been unlinked? And what do I do if I really need the information and it’s now gone?

You’ll be glad to know that there is a whole movement devoted to changing the content of the Internet from ephemera to artifacts. Internet libraries are springing up everywhere to catalog and preserve Web pages, images, even audio and video files.

The largest (I think) Internet Library is the Internet Archive, a “nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive of Web.” The archive is a collection of snapshots of Web pages from the around the world, taken at various points in time.

Use the Wayback Machine, type in your company’s URL and try not to cringe as you browse pages from five years ago. Check out the archive for the Matrix Group Web site; talk about a trip down memory lane.

The Internet Archive also has special Web collections (or links) for specific topics, like the Asian Tsunami or the 2002 Election. Just think about how much content is online from this year’s election and how much of the news and information you relied on to make your choice is online. The question is: will it be online next year and what will we have lost as a society when that content is gone?

Other terrific Internet libraries include:

In addition, Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. That’s why every search results page on Google has a link to the page and the cached version, which is what Google indexes and searches.

Thank goodness for libraries!

Google Searches Amazon Better Than Amazon

jpineda — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:00:46 +0000

Amazon.com is really lucky that Google.com indexes its content and then adds the fabulous Google search algorithms to searches. In order to find something on Amazon.com, I had to find it on Google.com.

My son begged me to purchase software based on the Dr. Seuss ABC Book. We had previously seen the program at the Apple Store. Even though I have a Mac at home, CJ’s computer is a PC and I wanted the PC version for him.

So I went to Amazon.com and typed “dr. Seuss alphabet software.” I got nothing. I tried “dr. seuss alphabet” and didn’t get any software.
I should have typed “dr. seuss ABC software” but somehow, I had alphabet on the brain. It was late and my normally decent searching skills were not kicking in.
So I went to Google.com and typed “dr. Seuss alphabet software” and yes, you guessed it, Google found the product I wanted on Amazon.com; it was the second link.
Google’s legendary search algorithms did it again. Alphabet got equated to ABC and I got what I needed. I bet I’m not the only person who has gone to Google.com to find the content on another site. If I wanted to, I could have asked Google to search for “dr. Seuss alphabet software” on the Amazon.com site by typing “dr. Seuss alphabet software site:amazon.com.”

Lesson for all of us who build Web sites: make sure your site is visible to Google and other Internet search engines (more on that topic in another post).

You Call That a Site Search?

jpineda — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:37:32 +0000

A friend works for Levi Strauss, so I always ask for her opinion when buying jeans. I was looking for skinny jeans; she recommended a pair of 503 jeans. So I went to Levi.com, typed “503″ and got nothing. I tried “levis 503″ and got nothing. I typed “skinny jeans” and finally got some results, but nothing for 503 jeans.

So I went to Amazon.com and typed “levis 503″ and got a hit for 503 jeans, as well as other jeans. It turns out that 503 jeans are no longer being sold directly by Levis, but a few are still available from Amazon.

The Levis site search missed an opportunity to:

tell me that 503 jeans are no longer being made
suggest similar jeans or jeans that succeeded 503 in the product line

Contrast the site search on Levi.com to that on CarnegieEndowment.org. Type “Iran” and you get:

the Endowment’s experts on Iran as the first two results; this makes sense since the organization’s main resource is its experts
the Iran landing page next; this is terrific because nearly all information related to Iran is linked from this page
individual articles related to Iran next

Now that’s what I call a site search.