Size Of The Internet

[Phyltre]

Is it just me, or has the internet grown so quickly in the past few years that good resources are usually buried in piles of mediocre ones? I've gone off in search of particular kinds of sites many times, only to go to three mediocre, hidden websites before I find an obscure site on the other side of the moon that has more stuff than I'd dreamed of when I started. It seems like much of the best content goes wasted simply because people can't spend the hours necessary to find the cool, competent websites that are actually worth visiting.

Many times I'll find a great, very useful site on a friend's computer and then completely forget the address--and never find it again. Google and the like do not even begin to help. My only working method is to go to a popular-type site, then use their links to links to links to websites that exist seemingly outside the borders of searchability.

Has anyone else noticed this, or found a resource that helps?

[duet maxwell]

I’ve noticed it to. But like you do I find them through links of links from main sites.
Its just something to deal with that cant be helped I guess

[GarbagePoe]

Internet needs to loose some weight.

[Mattress]

I can usually find what I need with a couple of well thought out google queries.

Sure there's a lot of crap on the internet but its always had a lot of crap (church of spam anyone?) One of the grestest things about the internet is that anyone can publish content to it. It takes power away from those who used to have a monopoly on news and information, and that is a wonderful thing.

[squakMix]

If the internet were a place how big would it be?

[jakeledel]

Originally posted by squakMix
If the internet were a place how big would it be?

yes

[ryan]

I got spam from a "Christian Loan Fund" or something a few days ago.

-.-

[Phyltre]

I guess my question is, why do so many greatly useful or savvy internet sites never enter the mainstream or get any mention in search sites, etc?

[kingo'mountain]

when you query something in google, a "robot" searches its indexes by keywords....

further than that, keywords have a role to make the site appear more easily... thats where SEO (search engine optimization) kicks in, the more keywords you use in meta tags, more likely it will come to be viewed by the engine

how sites "register" themselves in google? beats me

[Mattress]

I don't think google operates that way. people (porn and spam) abused the meta keywords by entering the whole dictionary in them.

Google determines site keywords a bit smarter by links to the page and the text contained in links as well as the information in the <title> tags as that is limited to a certain amount of text. There's probably other stuff that I don't know about that google uses.

if a site is obscure in google its because it's obscure on the net in general

[Phyltre]

So you're saying that the crappy sites are putting misleading keywords in their metatags, while honest good websites don't bother?

I've come to the decision that the internet needs a directory of some sort, all this waste of good material and proliferation of bad material is bound to catch up with it eventually.

[kingo'mountain]

you guys dont get it, ANY computer can become a dedicated web server with the right software and alot of money!!!

therefore, when you make a webpage and store it on ANY server, either yours or other's, its online! the fact that you cant find it doesnt mean its not there

[kingo'mountain]

mattress is right, meta keywords are just a part of the whole search deal, and the fact that crappy sites are found faster than good ones.... blame the webmasters

[kingo'mountain]

as come to think of it, a non firewalled, always connected PC is considered a webserver, at least for hackers, lol

[PulseDriver]

Yes, many put misleading keywords AND content into their sites. This is one of the most annoying techniques I stumble across when searching for stuff. Another factor is that the big american online companies buy all the good sites and put crap on them instead. Anyone ever used http://www.3dfiles.com ? That was the best gaming file resort I ever used with patches for most any game there ever was. Now it's part of gamespIt! Lots of other sites have gone big over the few last years and that pisses me off, cause they change the content, and you suddenly have to register everywhere to get trashmail in return... geez.. Why can't they let the good sites be what they are..

EDIT: Can you click the link to 3Dfiles.com and tell me how much stuff on the site you find interesting? Did you find what you expected?

[Timbaland]

Originally posted by squakMix
If the internet were a place how big would it be?

Reminds me of the episode of Chappelles show. It would be a whole planet, infested with annoyin asshats poppin up in your face saying things like "Enlarge your penis Today!!!" and "Try AOL for 90 days freeeeee when you sign up 10 members, Cancel anytime!! Cancelation void in all Countries, $200 activation fee. ".

It would be fun to punch out all those pop ups, but sadly computers dont have that feature yet

[squakMix]

Haha, I remember that

[k_rock923]

I thought that most search engines don't look at the meta tags very much. It's amazing how once again, the abuse of meta tags boils down to the allimghty dollar. Put totally unrelated keywords to get more traffic and increase advertising revenue. It's ridiculous. Thank god for adblock, but what does it say when you have to update the definitions once a week?

[PulseDriver]

No, it's no only meta-tags... it's pop-site, which have the actual content, just with same color on the font as the background and as small text as possible and all sorts of ways to hide the content, but the robots just search the documents, they don't care wether the text is visual or not, they only pick the text up, and this really suxx.

[PrintScrn]

every browser has a "favourites" feature. I use that. Also google desktop search is making life easier.

[Phyltre]

The problem is finding the favorites themselves in the first place. I've spent hours looking for a particular resource, and given up--only to come a across a vague link to a site that whipped the collective tails of all the popular sites I'd been looking at.

It's like there's a secret underground internet scene or something...I'm pretty sure there IS. (Besides IRC!!)

[simon snowflake]

yeah like "the treehouse" in Otherland from Tad Williams. (A very very good SF/Fantasy)

[billkruse]

Originally posted by Phyltre
So you're saying that the crappy sites are putting misleading keywords in their metatags, while honest good websites don't bother?

I've come to the decision that the internet needs a directory of some sort, all this waste of good material and proliferation of bad material is bound to catch up with it eventually.

Hence the origins of Yahoo and DMOZ, which started out to be just that.

BB

[squakMix]

Q: how big is the internet?
A: The size of the whole world! *spreads arms open for a hug*

[petitechloe664y]

Originally posted by squakMix
Q: how big is the internet?
A: The size of the whole world! *spreads arms open for a hug*

its more like the universe that's traversing in a red shift it continously expands

[protegechris]

I'm looking forward to the new internet

[General Geoff]

It'd be next to impossible to map the entire internet, due to the nature of it. I like to think of the net as the Wild West of the Information Age. It's far closer to anarchy than just about anything else seen today. I'd like to keep it that way, but the Internet will inevitably become more "buttoned down" and sterilized, as well as politically correct over time. I'm just glad that I can experience the great free world of the Internet now, before it turns into an abyss of government-approved propaganda and marketting.

[petitechloe664y]

yeah the internet is the closest thing to an anarchist society

[Phyltre]

Which is great, until we can't find the good stuff anymore.

[aFfLiCtEd]

Here ya go ... The Good Stuff

[Psythik]

Originally posted by aFfLiCtEd
Here ya go ... The Good Stuff

It appears that the internet has 30,300 ends.

[aFfLiCtEd]

Says 30,400 here.

[Myxomatosis]

On google I see a lot of websites that steal info off eachother, and they're only a few queries below, etc.

[morgado]

Originally posted by Phyltre
Which is great, until we can't find the good stuff anymore.

I can still find good stuff. Just get out of internet. Get ya friends and go out for a ride. Get ya family and go out for dinner. Spend a whole day with ya kids (if you have any).

Internet it's becoming a major collection of bad things, but then, as anarchy, you can't really say what's good or bad ...

[Smeggle]

There's a link over at w3c where you can 'Download the Internet'..I clicked it once and took a screen shot of the download readout...

on 56k download time 4,73? ...........Years!

Fook says I took a quick SS and cancelled 4k+ years

Found the fecking thing the other day looking through some bckup discs but can't remember whre i've put it - and i can't find the link now either..w3c is a pain sometimes





* I'm sure I posted this before though ..last year sometime

[gaekwad2]

this?
http://www.w3schools.com/downloadwww.htm

[Smeggle]

Insufficient memmory for drive c: total time of download 4831 years size fooking a lot lmao

yeah thats it - as well it's the fastest download speed I can get 42kpbs down ...yeah right lol

[whiteflip]

How many clicks wide is the internet?
How many degrees of seperation are there between all people of the planet? (Number of people it takes from one person to get in contact with another person).

[Chebyrator]

Originally posted by ScYtH
It appears that the internet has 30,300 ends.

lol that's funny

[Phyltre]

I suppose that while the internet has the overall effect of connecting people of different cultures and viewpoints, it also inevitably further contracts individuals of certain spheres of influence into more bloc-like communities.

Which is to say, you can find most anything on the internet--but if you rely only on your background for things to look for, you will simply be doing the same thing in a different place.