Old Cacti Guide

Saguaro123 · Post by **Saguaro123** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:36 am

Did Cacti Guide used to look like this?

http://cactiguide.com/About%20Me.htm

Post by **daiv** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:10 pm

You got it. I leave those old pages on the server because search engines seem to love them. I considered a 401 redirect on them, but in other experiences I've had, the search engines don't behave the way they say that they do.

In my former occupation we battled "black hat" search positioning all the time. We continued to follow the "rules" only to lose position to a bunch of keyword stuffing artificial "links-in" sites.

I especially dislike the whole "link-swap" for search ranking and refuse to add any links on CactiGuide.com for the sake of "ranking". I get requests for these kinds of links all the time. It's a losing battle I'm sure.

Ok I ranted a bit here.

If you want to see a history of changes on this site or any site, this is really a fun site to visit:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://cactiguide.com

edit (looks like you'll have to copy and paste the URL in your browser)

Daiv

John C · Post by **John C** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:14 pm

Yes, I did notice that the old cacti guide pops up alot when searching different cacti. In fact, I don't think I have ever been directed to the new site, just the old one.

Post by **daiv** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 4:29 pm

John C wrote:Yes, I did notice that the old cacti guide pops up alot when searching different cacti. In fact, I don't think I have ever been directed to the new site, just the old one.

John, what search engine do you use?

Here are some statistics for those who like statistics:

On Google:
Out of the 124 Genera listed on CactiGuide.com

7 link only to the OLD site
6 are on the 1st page, 1 is not

10 link to BOTH the old and the new
all are on the 1st page

104 link only to the NEW site
81 are on the 1st page
23 are not

3 are unaccounted for - (way off the first page)

So if you search Google, you are much more likely to encounter the new site than the old.

Here are the names that pull only the old site:

Ariocarpus
Astrophytum
Echinocactus
Peniocereus
Pilosocereus
Schlumbergera
Sclerocactus

John C · Post by **John C** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 4:53 pm

Yes I use google. Neat statistics!

Sorry I should have said before that it was when I search for pictures of different plants, and when I click to enlarge them I am sent normally to the old version of Cacti Guide.
Sorry I should have said that before.

Post by **daiv** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:34 pm

Ahh, the image search. I don't have an easy way to test that. Don't really want to do it manually.

John C · Post by **John C** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:35 pm

daiv wrote:Ahh, the image search. I don't have an easy way to test that. Don't really want to do it manually.

That would take a while!

Saguaro123 · Post by **Saguaro123** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:41 pm

When did the guide go through all that change? I use google and Safari 3.1.2.

Post by **daiv** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:42 pm

Over the years. You can see the changes on this site:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Saguaro123 · Post by **Saguaro123** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:03 pm

Very cool Daiv.

The guide has gone through many changes before I discovered it.

I see that a lot of some other species were dragged into the Echinopsis Group.

Saguaro123 · Post by **Saguaro123** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:09 pm

The forum has had changes as well.

http://web.archive.org/web/200412160241 ... com/forum/

Post by **daiv** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:11 pm

Isn't that a fun site Byron?

Saguaro123 · Post by **Saguaro123** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:12 pm

daiv wrote:Isn't that a fun site Byron?

It sure is.

I see that the guide and forum has developed over time.

CelticRose · Post by **CelticRose** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 4:39 am

daiv wrote:Here are the names that pull only the old site:

Ariocarpus
Astrophytum
Echinocactus
Peniocereus
Pilosocereus
Schlumbergera
Sclerocactus

My curiosity got the better of me.

I use dogpile http://www.dogpile.com, a meta search engine, i.e., it searches several search engines at once.

On the above genera (except Schlumbergera), I got both the old and the new site, although the old site always ranked higher.

For Schlumbergera, I only got the new site, despite the fact that google is one of dogpile's search engines.

Post by **daiv** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:13 pm

Yes, I think search engine positioning is far from being as well organized and consistent as people assume. It's my opinion that the search engine companies themselves are in a constant scramble to figure out what they are doing.

Very much like Cactus taxonomy!

But because of the higher ranking of the old pages, I leave them up there. In theory that is supposed to make ranking worse, but it doesn't. So I'm following the rule "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." rather than go with search engines stated policies.