[Web4lib] Where on the Web is the U.S. Constitution?

[Robert Balliot]

The search engine algorithms reward length of time that the site has been
operational,
number of links from quality websites (big + from academic/ edu resources),
key word
and key phrase content - with key words and phrases as the sentence
structure
subjects, and frequency of site updates.

I am not aware of very many government sites or academic sites that
intentionally
structure their sites for search engine optimization.  It appears to be more
of an
after thought if at all.  Most can improve their sites using a internal
Google search
engine and testing key word/ key phrase searches against the results they
hope to
get.

The commercial  side of the web expends tremendous energy pushing SEO
strategy for
a whole range of key words and phrases.  Although gov and edu sites have  an

immediate advantage of algorithym credibility, failure to optimize can end
up having
the most intellectually valuable sites pushed down in  rankings.

The top five sites in Google  organics are very, very valuable  to
e-commerce. They
paid off my mortgage.

R. Balliot
http://oceanstatelibrarian.com



On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins at gmail.com
> wrote:

> I wanted to look up something in the Constitution (the actual powers
> granted to the vice president, for what that's worth) so I did a
> Google search.  A Sponsored Link came up to this site at the Library
> of Congress:
>
> http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/creatingtheus/Pages/SlObjectList.aspx
>
> It's entitled "Creating the United States."  It's an interactive
> exhibition mounted by LOC.  It requires Microsoft Silverlight to view.
> (There are some HTML links, no doubt for ADA compliance.)  It's pretty
> cool stuff, giving a historical perspective -- e.g. how we got from
> Confederation to United States.
>
> But there is a problem.  The home page doesn't seem to have a link to
> the text of the U.S. Constitution.  You may not be able to reproduce
> what I saw, as the ad doesn't always come up, but it seems to me that
> if LOC is going to put themselves at the top of the SERP when you
> search for "U.S. Constitution" they should provide prominently the
> actual text of the document.
>
> If you'll try this search you will find many different presentations,
> both within and without the Federal government.  Cornell Law's
> presentation, which I think may date way back to early 90s, tops both
> Google and Bing's hit lists.  It's interesting that no Federal site is
> in the top 5.  We've got www.usconstitution.net and
> www.constitution.org and Findlaw.  When we get to Federal sites, we've
> got the US House, the US Senate, the Archives,  LOC, GPO ....
>
> It is interesting to me that Cornell Law is "the" source that's
> apparently most linked to, not one from the government itself.  But no
> doubt the fact that there are so many competing versions are out
> there, and Cornell garnered links early, combine to make that the
> case.  Separation of powers, I guess.
>
> /rich
>
>
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