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Making TP.SE googlable / reachable

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While it is easy to send the full link by e-mail, I found it hard to spread the word by (literally) the word of mouth.

Just type http://theoreticalphysics.stackexchange.com/.

No one*) will remember.

*) Up to the error bars.

Search for it!

Well, I guess that it is going to be a long time until (hopefully) one typing theoretical physics will find TP.SE.

I will type it in your computer...

Well, the original version is a bit lengthy, but http://bit.ly/tpse isn't.

Still, I think it is crucial to have a few catchy words that can be easily googled (i.e. one of the first results will be TP.SE). Any ideas are welcome. Maybe it is about the elevator pitch / tagline (e.g. Theoretical Physics - real questions), maybe one needs to invent an alias (e.g. ResPhysica) or there is sth else one can do.

Do you have any ideas how to make it easy to remember and to google TP.SE?

See also:

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

asked Nov 6, 2011 in SE.TP.discussion by Piotr Migdal (1,260 points) [ no revision ]

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2 Answers

Maybe the unnecesary, obvious answer but I will offer it anyway.

Increase the site's pagerank by linking to the main page and specific questions or answers on blogrolls and blog entries. For example, I just posted this entry on the CSTheory Community Blog.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

answered Nov 7, 2011 by Aaron Sterling (130 points) [ no revision ]

Maybe the unnecessary, obvious comment but I will offer it anyway. That'll take a long time, and when tp.se becomes the top result for "theoretical physics" the site will be very well known, diminishing the need for it to be easily findable. We need a solution that works *now*, to ease the task of promoting the site.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Mateus Araújo (270 points) [ no revision ]

@Mateus: Don't underestimate the power of what seems like a handful of links. The topics of this site are not "Barak Obama" or "Justin Bieber." They are things like "quantum money." If a few more sites included the question-link that I included in my blog entry, then that question would probably be the #1-3 hit for "quantum money."

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Aaron Sterling (130 points) [ no revision ]

That's true, but does not answer Migdał's question. People won't search for "quantum money" intending to find tp.se.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Mateus Araújo (270 points) [ no revision ]

I answered, "how can we make this site more googleable/reachable?" I won't respond further to your comments here, as I am getting the impression you are annoyed that people didn't like your name change idea and you are taking it out on me. I look forward to your constructive suggestions.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Aaron Sterling (130 points) [ no revision ]

That's a very offensive thing to say. If you're not my comments seriously, there's no point in writing them.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Mateus Araújo (270 points) [ no revision ]

@Mateus Araújo: no, it doesn't take a long time. You just need to have a reasonable number of users link to it from pages with high rank like their university homepages. A few links from homepages on MIT/UCB/... websites have a considerable effect.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Kaveh (0 points) [ no revision ]

@AaronSterling: Well, linking is an obvious thing (and it is good you brought it to the attention). But my point was not to make TP.SE reachable by random, but make it also reachable on purpose. I.e. in a way you can say someone 'Just google for XXX and you will find it.' The tricky thing is that as we have no distinctive and easy name (well, I don't expect people to learn the full name easily), the standard approach does not work. So I am curious how to go around it.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Piotr Migdal (1,260 points) [ no revision ]

Search "theoretical physics q and a" and see what happens.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 7, 2011 by Aaron Sterling (130 points) [ no revision ]

I should point out to @PiotrMigdal and Mateus that tp.se is actually a registered Swedish domain, and so I think it is a bad idea putting too much effort into trying to make google find us first for that particular query.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 8, 2011 by Joe Fitzsimons (3,575 points) [ no revision ]

@JoeFitzsimons: I used TP.SE as an acronym for people how are already inside.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 8, 2011 by Piotr Migdal (1,260 points) [ no revision ]

@Piotr: Sorry, I thought you literally meant you wanted the query "TP.se" to point here.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 8, 2011 by Joe Fitzsimons (3,575 points) [ no revision ]

Here is a counterintuitive thing: right now if you search for "theoretical physics" the area 51 for TP.SE page is among the first 30 results and is ranked above the main site, mainly because people have linked to it when the proposal was in the commitment phase.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 8, 2011 by Kaveh (0 points) [ no revision ]

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"theoretical physics exchange" works right now.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

answered Nov 8, 2011 by Aaron Sterling (130 points) [ no revision ]

The area51 page for the TP.SE is on the first page when I search for: theoretical physics question

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

commented Nov 8, 2011 by Kaveh (0 points) [ no revision ]

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