Jan

3

Physical and Logical Domains and Themes

Filed Under Google 

Not only was there a post done at SEWF July, 2004 but there was a post done way, long ago at WebmasterWorld on the very same thing - June 14, 2003

Logical vs. Physical Domains and Site Themes

There are some around who don’t think the whole concept of “Site Themes” is valid, but they’d have a hard time convincing those who have long reaped the benefits of applying the concepts. Besides, it does make for intuitive site navigation and is good for users - so I really fail to see the point of arguing against it. Also, there are *still* current papers being published that make reference to term vectors for sites, and with all the hubbub about LSI that was around late 2003 and early 2004, it’s may just not be as unconnected a topic as it might seem. It’s all about words anyway, because that’s what people use when they search.

Something else that caught my attention on this topic recently was a comment in recent blog entry by Matt Cutts entitled

The Little 301 that Could

We’re getting closer to calling for feedback on 64.233.179.104, but I probably won’t ask for reactions for another week or two. Right now that datacenter isn’t serving traffic 100% of the time as people pull it out of the rotation from time to time to tune things up under the hood. That data center has some infrastructure that I think in time will work better for canonicalization and redirects. We also recently improved site: to show slightly more logical urls as well.

The site: command is now currently showing more logical URLs - the index pages of subdirectories on sites, right at the top of the pages returned for the query.

I really don’t see anything wrong with setting up a site so it’s “themed” which makes it far easier to maintain, and is easy for users to navigate - regardless of what it’s called. So I truly fail to see why anyone argues against the concept, when it’s just plain, flat-out user friendly.

Comments

One Response to “Physical and Logical Domains and Themes”

  1. DianeV on January 18th, 2006 10:40 am

    I totally agree, Marcia. I am surprised when people seem to ignore logical (and thorough) optimization in lieu of some “most important” optimization element. It’s as if history has been dropped out of view.

    Aside from anything else, there’s nothing so ridiculous as trying to develop the navigation for a multi-multi themed site such that it won’t confuse people. Of course, lots of very large sites do just that, but that’s another issue altogether.