Live data from Hacker News

Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

google.com

91–100 of 131 posts

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#92

Everyone seems to be focusing on the .gov site but if you take a look at the Stack Overflow home page, the page that would normally get indexed highly, there is very little telling Google what it is. There is no tag in the header. The H1 tag, important to Google, says "Top Questions". The content of the first page constantly changes. Plus, I would bet that most of the links into Stack Overflow are to individual artic…

Not sure I disagree with SEO on "Stack Overflow" who is googling for that term?

Practically any technical question I've searched for has resulted in a stack overflow (or super user) #1 result. I'd say they are doing a pretty good job, even if they don't do all the old school SEO stuff

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#93
post #28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's why: http://stackoverflow.com/a/5411601/620239 . Forgot to change that first occurrence after pasting it in. "Oh, it works. I'm done."

Another good reason why you should always use "example.com".

Unless, you know, you want to be in the #1 spot on a Google search.

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#94

Everyone seems to be focusing on the .gov site but if you take a look at the Stack Overflow home page, the page that would normally get indexed highly, there is very little telling Google what it is. There is no tag in the header. The H1 tag, important to Google, says "Top Questions". The content of the first page constantly changes. Plus, I would bet that most of the links into Stack Overflow are to individual artic…

Not sure I disagree with SEO on "Stack Overflow" who is googling for that term? Practically any technical question I've searched for has resulted in a stack overflow (or super user) #1 result. I'd say they are doing a pretty good job, even if they don't do all the old school SEO stuff

According to the Google Adwords tool, "stack overflow" is googled 74,000 times each month. Not to mention all the permutations.

If I worked for Stack Overflow, I would also try to optimize for more general terms. The questions and answers are good at getting those long-tail keywords, but not so good at the more generic ones like "coding help" or "javascript help" or a hundred others. Stack Overflow isn't on the first page for either of those examples, or many others.

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#95
post #63
post #3

Conversation from three days ago at http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169405/google-indexi... suggests that the best hypothesis is that at some point in the past, www.doioig.gov was compromised and maybe redirected to StackOverflow. (This hypothesis is supported by a Google cache of doioig.gov showing the message "Due to security concerns, our website will be unavailable until transition to the Department of th…

(Actually the explanation at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5311430 looks a lot better. I do wonder what's up with the DoI's recent "security concerns").

They have a rather long history of security concerns. Many times ending up in front of a judge.

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree it's necessarily poor SEO. They should do everything they can to ensure that pages that answer questions have better pageranks than their largely useless homepage. That's what gives the name stackoverflow power, questions actually getting answered.

Certainly the individual questions and answers should rank highly. They do a somewhat better job at SEO on those pages, although there still is no meta description tag, leaving Google to guess what to put on the search results page. They could do a lot better on those pages too. The real content is buried below lots of javascript and other code. The higher on the page your real content is, the better. They do have pr…

Too good, even. Google has a bad habit of ranking a question page lower (for matching keywords) than some random other (more popular) question page that links to the relevant question page.

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#97
post #27

I'm suspiciously seeing, "2,643 people +1'd this." While I would be excited to see such enthusiasm relating to a government property, this doesn't smell kosher.

For me it shows that one of my friends +1'd it. I'm pretty sure he +1'd the real Stack Overflow though.

That is worth verifying, as it would be an interesting bug in how Google transfers juice between redirects.

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#98

Gotta wonder though: should StackOverflow.com rank high for "stack overflow"? After all, a "stack overflow" isn't necessarily related to programming questions. Yes, you can ask questions on StackOverflow.com about stack overflows, but that's missing the point. So if I have a domain name that's a thing, but my site has very little content related to that thing, should I rank high for queries about that thing?

Would a person struggling with a stack overflow actually google "stack overflow", though? Surely only a very fresh programmer would need to google it, and only if he/she knew what the concept was. But here's what an infinite recursion in a C program prints if I run it: Segmentation fault: 11 Well, that's C for you. If I try Ruby: test.rb:2: stack level too deep (SystemStackError) Ok, still not the same nomenclature.…

Re go:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4226964/how-come-go-doesn...

Clever birds.

Re: Stack Overflow ranks #2 for Google Search for "Stack Overflow"

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link sadly does not work for me who uses iGoogle (for now) on google.co.uk. If it's a short URL you want, then http://bit.ly/YUJZLu . But you'll have to trust me when you click that as you've no idea where it'll take you to.

Right click and copy link, paste into address bar, add a + to the end to see where it goes. http://bit.ly/YUJZLu+

And that doesn't work on mobile, because they have a "forgetful" mobile site :(
Post reply on HN