SKSuser

I was browsing google images for random aquarium pictures, as well as pictures of specific plants. I noticed that APC rarely shows up on the first page and wondered why. I believe its important to be up there. Being at the forefront of the google image scene lends a name recognition to tropica, badmans, or etc. that otherwise might not exist. I know tropica is a bad example as they are already very popular, but they show consistantly when a plant is googled.
Here's a good example: aquarium-gardening.com The man has two types of plants for sale, and not much else. I would have never known about him, nor necessarily should I, except for google images where he appears on page one after a search for anubias.

Is there a way to push us more towards the top? I think with the fluid nature of threads and forum content, the plantfinder is one of the few consistent ways of getting our name out. As it is, I can think of only several ways of discovering our site; searching for "aquarium forums" and getting lucky by visiting APC instead of another, word of mouth, and links from other forums. I found the APC by googling "aquarium forums" because I needed a fishy cyberhome and was already familiar with the forum format from creating several unsuccessful ones and being a member of other non-fish forums. Some people don't have that avenue of discovering the APC. Forums scare some people, others don't know they exist, and I believe that the plantfinder would be a good "gateway drug" to get some of them coming back for more.

I believe that we have enough plants in the plantfinder that they should show up consistantly.
Looking at the pictures I can see why they don't show up more often. The file names contain names such as "E%20berteroi%201.jpg" and are missing an alternate text. Also if I search for a phrase which I know exists in the plantfinder such as, "emergent growth with up to 13 inch-tall inflorescences," admittedly a very uncommon search phrase, I get nothing. There should be exactly and only one listing for that phrase, and it should belong to APC.
It appears that google and google images has completely ignored the plantfinder.

BryceM

Getting things to show up on Google has become a business in and of itself. I've been looking at this for my own business lately. Usually, access to the top search spots has less to do with site popularity and more to do with forking over $$$. Your comments are good ones. Let's see where we can go with this.

orlando

Optimization....Those adds you see to the right of the first page are paid for by the web site. It cost thousands to do this.
Every time you click those web links they have to pay Google for that. Now every time we link something over here on APC or say " Google" it does help.
Or if we keep saying things like "Aquarium Plants". That does help.
All the spiders look for is Text. And smart text makes for better rankings. Of course well mapped out optimization as well.
Aquarium Plants.

SKSuser

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that APC appears to be ignored alltogether.

I believe that not only is APC not optimized for google, it is intentionally or unintentionally blocking it. I laud APC's security on the boards as a whole, as I'm sure it results in less spam for its members. I don't particularly want my posts floating around on google for that reason. However, I believe that the plantfinder would not yield much of interest to an automated email gathering spam spider. If there are email addresses for picture copyrights etc in the plantfinder, they could be easily removed, placed elsewhere, and referenced.
At the following referenced site, a man mentions problems he had with his php site. He stated that the problem was that names like:
were simply to "boring" and long to be catalogued by the google spider. A more appropriate name would be
Here is the fix he used. I believe that the php program automatically fixes all the addresses, so its not labor intensive. The potential problems I can see are minimal.
Users which block session cookies would have a hard time using the plantfinder. They would also have a hard time buying anything on ebay, plane tickets, etc and probably can't use APC's iTrader feedback either. Even my paranoid father allows session cookies.
Search engines which have found our plantfinder would then contain broken links, but who uses anything besides google these days anyway.
Users whom had bookmarked individual plants would find their links broken.

Anyway, here's what the guy did.
Unfortunately, I've had no experience with PHP, so I have no idea whether this idea is otherwise a good one or not.

"Aquarium plants"

Robert Hudson

Well I don't know about photo searches, but APC comes up all over the place when doing searches for "aquarium plants" and various plant names, not only on the first page, but in the top ten. I think APC does pretty well.

Its not really about money. My WEB site has been in Google since 1999 and in the top ten for "aquarium plants" and "aquarium plants for sale" since 2000, and I have never spent a dime on Google. In 2001 I spent 200 dollars or whatever it was to get in Yahoos directory, but thats the only money I have ever spent on search engines. Now when I had a forum, I could not for the life of me get it to come up in Google or any other search engine.

Google actually has a new program going on right now to increase their photo search results. They are looking for people to surf the net and add photo/urls matched to search terms to google. I don't know how it works exactly, but someone here could volunteer and link APC photos directly to google.

SKSuser

Tell me about it.
I was very embarrased after I found out how to spell Glutaraldehyde. I found I was near the top of the google search for "gluteraldehyde." My example will forever lead people to believe that APC is for people that cain't spell stuff gud.

I think we're at the mercy of Google, as recently I've found searches. However, I used to search for specific phrases which I knew existed on the boards, without success.