Website ??

[monkey44]

I have a website for photos etc. When I type in the address in Google, it comes up properly. When I type the address in Firefox, it just gives me a search page with a bunch of irrelevant sites, none of which are my website.

Can't give the site address here because RV net says it's commercial, but I don't sell anything on it ... just post images and free content and links. Anyway, anyone know why it won't recognize my website?

[Gdetrailer]

monkey44 wrote:
Gdetrailer - you are correct, middle search box. But I thought it also searched a website if you type it in ... looks like that's my mistake - when I make a link, or type it in header box, it's always worked properly. But I could not figure out why a search engine would not bring it up with just the address ... now I understand it a bit better.

Altho, the middle box does bring it up as an address but not near the top ... it's down the page link list a ways. SO, I have learned a lesson today ... thanks again all for your assistance -- M44 Stay safe, and happy camping.

Confusing for sure but top address bar will not only take you directly to the website but OPEN that website, no prompts, no warnings.

Using the search bar under the big Firefox logo in the middle of the screen launches a search engine and generally when you type in or copy and paste a full address will search and find any site on the web and show the search results without opening a website.

Since search engines list their results using keywords, the website you are wanting to find sometimes may be low on the results list.. Has to do with how many times the keywords have been found on the web..

I honestly like using a web search when accessing a site address that I am not familiar with. This allows me to find the website and then read the "description" that the search engine gives..

Here is a snip of a search in Dogpile for Lowes using their full web address..



Notice the text under the website that shows, that is a description of the website.. I read that description before entering the website to make sure I am reaching the intended website.

In this case, I would choose the top one since I am sure that is the official website, otherwise I look down the search list to find the real website.

Scammers and spoofers will often get web addresses that are very similar to the business they are targeting, often they mangle the address by one letter or a number..

Learned this trick way back when AOL started the "unlimited" Internet service.. All it takes is accidentally miss spelling the web address and you can land on a forged look alike website..

I only use the top address bar IF I know it is legit or the chances of misspelling is not a big factor or potential issue..

Even address links in emails makes me suspicious so I use a search engine before I even think of opening those..

This simple action has kept my PCs virus free for yrs..

[monkey44]

Gdetrailer - you are correct, middle search box. But I thought it also searched a website if you type it in ... looks like that's my mistake - when I make a link, or type it in header box, it's always worked properly. But I could not figure out why a search engine would not bring it up with just the address ... now I understand it a bit better.

Altho, the middle box does bring it up as an address but not near the top ... it's down the page link list a ways. SO, I have learned a lesson today ... thanks again all for your assistance -- M44 Stay safe, and happy camping.

[Gdetrailer]

opnspaces wrote:
Both links open fine for me with Firefox.
Silly question but you mentioned the search bar twice in your posts. Are you making sure to type the address into the top and not into the search bar in the middle of the screen? I ask because I've made that same mistake a few times in the past

Click For Full-Size Image.

OP is trying it in the "middle screen" search box and it is not finding their website..

And yes, it doesn't work correctly for me as I have tried it..

The address bar works fine, it is a search engine issue..

I suspect since search engine uses keywords more so than web addresses it isn't finding the website partly due to it being low on KEYWORD indexing which is how search engines work..

Try the OPs full web addresses in the middle search engine, I suspect you will have the same result I have..

Generally you can put a full web address into the search bar and it will find the website and place near the top of the list IF it is well established and has been found and indexed by the search engines..

I have done this many times over the yrs to avoid accidentally entering a bad URL and potentially hitting a bad website..

Try a known FULL website address like Home Depot or Lowes, those WILL show up using the search engine box in the middle of the screen..

[opnspaces]

Both links open fine for me with Firefox.
Silly question but you mentioned the search bar twice in your posts. Are you making sure to type the address into the top and not into the search bar in the middle of the screen? I ask because I've made that same mistake a few times in the past

Click For Full-Size Image.

[garmp]

Mac here with Firefox & Chrome. Both got me right there.

[Gdetrailer]

What you are seeing is the search engines are looking for already "weighted" indexed "key word searches".

In a nutshell, websites with high traffic loads within the keywords gives a set of results showing all of the higher ranked (and busy websites) results at the top of the list.

Yours just may not have enough "hits" to make it on the search engines index list yet..

For instance if I enter the entire RV.net address into the google search bar, it will return results with the entire RV.net address at the top of the list.. Long established website with a lot of traffic gets to the top of search engine lists..

It is why it is important to remove those spammer posts from the forum.. The more places they can post their websites, the higher they get on the index lists as the web spiders find those posted spammer websites on other legit websites like RV.net.

Takes time to get a freshly minted legit website to get noticed in search engines indexing lists..

[monkey44]

That's what I can't grasp. IF I do a search, that's one thing. But if I write out a website address, it should only go direct to that website. I'm not using search terms, I'm using a web address in the search bar.

Maybe searches don't work the way I think. Following up, if I paste a link in FB or other SM, the link works. All point to the personal website, for now. It will eventually have its own - but for now, its just pointing as we develop the website and the NPO. Thanks for all your help guys ... it makes me less bummed about the connection. Will probably work out eventually as we get organized and change it over. Probably months away still.

[Gdetrailer]

Directly pasting the full web addresses into the top browser bar (not the search engine bar) takes me right to your websites..

Entering the same full web addresses in the search engine bar (which is set to Google search engine) only gets results for the billdelory website.

No results for wildlife website (although I didn't scroll through the all the pages of results).

Using Dogpile I get same results as Google..

So, your websites ARE up and running and available, the downside is they may not have been indexed yet by the search engine web spiders or not had enough traffic to get noticed and indexed by search engine spiders. Lack of traffic can be an issue on getting up the list but regardless since I used the entire web address, it should have matched that address in my searches..

[monkey44]

BTW: I tried DOGPILE, and it still comes up as a search page, and about six or seven links down the page, it shows it as my personal name page.

Now, I'm wondering if putting the term or link in the header photo would make a difference, instead of my name, but put WildlifeUSA up as the title... maybe that's what's confusing my search -- or could be some glitch in my Laptop history or link saver that goes to both sites - so declines it. I can fix that, if so. My shortcuts and bookmarks work fine.

Plus, my name page is the original site name, and we added the Wildlife addresses when we bought them, and just pointed at the site already labeled. This stuff puzzled me often 🙂 We wanted to put it up originally as separate website, but can't legally do that as NPO until we are certified via state and feds.

[monkey44]

1492 wrote:
Website: www.billdelorey.com
Alternate www.wildlifeUSA.net

Both URLs opened fine for me in Firefox, redirecting to https://billdelorey.com/. No search page results.

'www' is actually a sub-domain to indicate world wide web in the early days of internet. Most hosts configure their servers to automatically redirect to your registered domain name.

Yes, my Firefox site uses Google search engine.

Yes, we made both open to my original site. We bought wildlifeUSA.net, and wildlifeUSA.org as well. Both point to my site, but will eventually point to a non-profit .org that we are developing for wildlife and wilderness protection. So, it's temporary link until we get certified as NPO. Then we'd divide the site.

FYI: 'We' are two wildlife journalists, one wildlife artist, one international wildlife researcher - A Ph.D, and the director - plus a few other interested professionals, but none of us have much of a tech background, so we get stuck. We know just enough to get us in tech trouble 🙂 ... we hope to hire a tech advisor part time, just to assist until we launch. Tech-dumb Monkey mostly built that website thru a lot of trial and error, mostly error. 🙂 and a little help here and there.

Guess I got off on a different track for a second. But, depending on how I try to open the site, it sometimes opens correctly and sometimes not - and FF opens a search page with a list of links like a regular search. Even when I type it in directly and even with Quote marks around it. Glad to see it opens for some, but it will be unfortunate if not for others.

[vermilye]

1492 wrote:
Website: www.billdelorey.com
Alternate www.wildlifeUSA.net

Both URLs opened fine for me in Firefox, redirecting to https://billdelorey.com/. No search page results.

'www' is actually a sub-domain to indicate world wide web in the early days of internet. Most hosts configure their servers to automatically redirect to your registered domain name.

Same with Safari o n a Mac.

[1492]

Website: www.billdelorey.com
Alternate www.wildlifeUSA.net

Both URLs opened fine for me in Firefox, redirecting to https://billdelorey.com/. No search page results.

'www' is actually a sub-domain to indicate world wide web in the early days of internet. Most hosts configure their servers to automatically redirect to your registered domain name.

[Gdetrailer]

monkey44 wrote:
I have a website for photos etc. When I type in the address in Google, it comes up properly. When I type the address in Firefox, it just gives me a search page with a bunch of irrelevant sites, none of which are my website.

Anyway, anyone know why it won't recognize my website?

Is Firefox configured to use Google as default search engine on your PC?

If it isn't that may explain why it isn't seeing the same results..

Different search engines typically will result in different results and that is due to the way the search engine is designed.

Most search engines will use key words, it finds them using programs called "spiders" which find and locate keywords then it indexes the locations.

Websites that have a lot of hits tend to get rated higher and tend to show up in higher in ranking.

From HERE..

"In the simplest case, a search engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most search engines store more than just the word and URL. An engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the meta tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial search engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different search engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders."

A good explanation of search engines can be found..

HERE

As a rule, I rarely use Google or Bing..

I use a multi search engine called DOGPILE which actually uses multiple search engines in a search and often gives me better results than just using one search engine at a time..

[RobWNY]

www.wildlifeUSA.net and www.billdelorey.com open fine in both MS Edge and Chrome for me. www.billdelorey.com opens to the same address while www.wildlifeUSA.net points to and opens to www.billdelorey.com