Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

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tepples
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Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by tepples »

If you just want to know the size and mapper of a game, be careful how you search.
I would have just added NesCartDB to the list of search engines in Firefox. MediaWiki supports it: if I visit Recent changes and put something in Firefox's search bar, "Add Nesdev wiki" appears. This appears to be triggered by a link to an OpenSearch description in the source code of each wiki page:

Code: Select all

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
 href="/w/opensearch_desc.php" title="Nesdev wiki (en)" />
But NesCartDB doesn't have an OpenSearch description. And I don't see how to create a useful one, given that it doesn't allow searching the "title/catalog ID" and "board/mapper" fields at once.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by rainwarrior »

Hmm, I always search for the NES Cart DB with the term "bootgod".
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koitsu
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by koitsu »

Likewise -- I search for "Bootgod DB", go there, then enter my search terms at the site. I don't rely on Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo/etc. to give me this information directly.

I think part of what tepples describes is a good example of excessive SEO focus (i.e. commercialism). ROM sites serve ads, which brings them money.
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tokumaru
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by tokumaru »

I do the same as rainwarrior, and search inside the site itself, like koitsu, so I never noticed this problem either.
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Dwedit
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by Dwedit »

Does this have to do with the robots.txt file? It's explicitly disallowing everything except googlebot. Duckduckgo shows no description for any page on bootgod's site.
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Bregalad
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by Bregalad »

Why do people do google searches when you don't need them? Just bookmark the NESCardDB site and you won't need to do any search. People nowadys :roll:

If I am away from home and do not remember the URL of bootgod's database (I actually don't since it's complicated) then I'll search for "bootgod database", just once. Then I'll use history if I don't remember the URL a second time.

There's no need for all that unnecessary trafic on Google (or whathever other search engine), also it mens extra spying on your from them.

As for the title of the thread, google always uses a "most likely" search strategy, and does so even more since its earlier days. They computed it's so much more likely someone search for a Dragon Warrior IV ROM than search for it's bootgod database entry that it assumes it's what you want. This also leaves it proposing stupid stuff most people are interested in but we aren't.
tepples
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by tepples »

Bregalad wrote:As for the title of the thread, google always uses a "most likely" search strategy, and does so even more since its earlier days.
I thought it wasn't supposed to autocorrect to swear words, porn, or blatant copyright infringement. I know Google Instant filters out words that are not safe for work.

How can bookmarks be made convenient on a screen not tall enough to have a bookmarks toolbar visible all the time? Is the canonical workaround just "buy and carry a bigger laptop"?
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rainwarrior
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by rainwarrior »

Bregalad wrote:Just bookmark the NESCardDB site
I do have it bookmarked, but this thread is about google searches for it, so I didn't think to bring it up. :P
Bregalad wrote:If I am away from home and do not remember the URL of bootgod's database (I actually don't since it's complicated)
Yeah, that :7777 really throws me, and I never remember that it's at dyndns.org either.
tepples wrote:How can bookmarks be made convenient on a screen not tall enough to have a bookmarks toolbar visible all the time? Is the canonical workaround just "buy and carry a bigger laptop"?
Why is it always a choice between what you're currently doing and some contrived unnecessary impractical solution? Do bookmarks really have to take up a whole horiziontal row of the screen like a toolbar? Is there no such thing as a drop-down menu anymore? Or a sidebar that's hidden until you need it? Etc. there's a zillion existing ways to do this besides a toolbar.
tepples
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by tepples »

rainwarrior wrote:
tepples wrote:How can bookmarks be made
sidebar
I had forgotten about that. Thank you for reminding me. Then I just need to remember to add it on at least one device on which I'm logged in to Firefox Sync and at least one device on which I'm logged in to Chrome.
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Myask
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by Myask »

Bookmarks may also be accessed through the address bar, by typing partial matches. (History, too, though I disabled that part.)
nitro2k01
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Re: Google autocorrects NesCartDB to ROM sites

Post by nitro2k01 »

It's not "autocorrection" per se, it's what might be described as aliasing or collation. If you search for something like bike, it will also include results for bikes (ie plural or other grammatical variations) as well as bicycle and other synonyms. Google considers some terms to be equivalent, even though neither of them are incorrect. Usually you can get around it by putting the search term in "sarcasm marks", often referred to as quote marks due to their legacy usage.
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