Does googling ask.metafilter.com get the archives?

May 5, 2004 12:54 AM

Does googling ask.metafilter.com get the archives? I was gearing up to chime in about visiting Moab for i_cola, when I had a moment of deja vu. The domain restricted search turned up only two non-results... but searching on my MetaTalk comment history broght me what I was looking for.
posted by weston to Feature Requests at 12:54 AM (6 comments total)

nyoky remembered his thread so all went well as far as the topic of Moab goes, but it got me wondering about searching AskMe.
posted by weston at 12:57 AM on May 5, 2004

weston, as far as I know, Google will cache dynamic content if there is a specific link somewhere on the web (i.e. a text displayed link) to the page that holds the dynamic content. In other words, Google will only cache that in which it can find, by following links.

Example below:-

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/7013

If I put the above link on a page that Google finds, it will then find this thread (by going to the link) and cache and index it.
posted by SpaceCadet at 5:45 AM on May 5, 2004

That's kind of weird seeing as #6025 had 'Moab' in both the thread and the comments, so you think it would show up. It also doesn't show up if you use the metatalk search and hack the URL at the end for ask.metafilter instead. However, I actually got the result you're looking by googling:

moab +ask.metafilter

so the archives are in the google cache, but are just not found in the site-specific search from here :-/
posted by carter at 5:48 AM on May 5, 2004

I had the same problem a few days ago.
posted by widdershins at 6:31 AM on May 5, 2004

...still haven't found a bike hire shop tho' ;-) In fact that thread died on it's arse pretty quick...
posted by i_cola at 3:25 PM on May 5, 2004

i_cola, I just added what may or may not be a marginally helpful post... just a few phone numbers/addresses for bike shops.
posted by weston at 6:22 PM on May 5, 2004