Triumph! and search engines

Discuss anything about Washington Grand Company Products (TRIUMPH!, MESHWESH, TERRAIN CARDS, ETC.)
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JonathanJ
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Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2017 10:48 pm

Triumph! and search engines

Post by JonathanJ » Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:22 pm

I've found "Triumph!" to be very hard to search for. Triumph is fairly common even in game names and most search engines ignore punctuation (i.e.,"!").

Do you think this will be a problem for you going forward?
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David Kuijt
Grand Master WGC
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Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:44 pm
Location: MD suburbs of Washington DC

Re: Triumph! and search engines

Post by David Kuijt » Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:43 pm

Most of the searches for DBA return "doing business as" and "database administrator" results.

In the 90s a search on my last name would return mostly items having to do with my father (who has 50 years of publications having to do with South American parasitic plants), my medieval hobby, and my brother (an Archaeologist). Then some hugely paid Dutch footballer got successful and famous, and now 80% of the search results on my last name return Dirk Kuijt fan pages and sports articles. Whatever. These things change.

It was hard enough to find a name we liked on which we could agree, that wasn't already in use, much less to fuss about maximizing search engine hits. As there comes to be more material up on the game system, and more links to meshwesh and to this forum, the search engine returns will gradually modify.
DK
El' Jocko
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Re: Triumph! and search engines

Post by El' Jocko » Wed Feb 22, 2017 8:12 pm

JonathanJ wrote:I've found "Triumph!" to be very hard to search for. Triumph is fairly common even in game names and most search engines ignore punctuation (i.e.,"!").

Do you think this will be a problem for you going forward?
This is a challenge that everyone faces when they're trying to make a product easy to locate. The Internet is a big place and there's a lot of competition. Knowing that, there are a number of things that we've done to make sure that our web sites are search-engine-friendly. And we'll continue to look at this as we move forward.

Out of curiosity, what did you search on? I tried Googling with just Triumph!, and we weren't anywhere in the top 50. But using triumph rules, we were number 3, 4 and 7. triumph ancients put us at 3 and 10, while triumph miniatures game put us at 1, 2 and 3. All of these searches were done in a private window to try and keep Google from tailoring the search for me (I'm pretty sure that Google knows of my interest in Triumph!).

Were there any combinations of Triumph with other words that didn't work for you? It's always useful to know how other people approach this so that I can try and make the search terms as inclusive as possible.

- Jack
JonathanJ
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Posts: 66
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2017 10:48 pm

Re: Triumph! and search engines

Post by JonathanJ » Sat Feb 25, 2017 5:43 pm

I searched for pretty much the same terms that you did.
My concern was that most people are not very good at searches. "Triumph!" doesn't get much. "Triumph game" gets mostly Triumph and Treachery. "Triumph ancients" gets a lot of articles on Roman triumphs...

Most of this will become less important if the game takes off (and I hope it will) since it will become a more popular search, but for now it isn't too distinctive. Distinctive titles make it easier when just starting out.

Of course none of this would matter if stupid search engines paid attention to punctuation. "Triumph!" would be just as distinctive as "De Bellis Whatever"...
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