Can FTLOP get into WineSearcher?

[Tom D.]

A while ago, WineSearcher (which I use a lot) added a tab with links to online reviews and tasting notes. In my experience, it seems like the only hits that show up there are from CellarTracker and a couple other websites that publish tasting notes. That's normally fine with me, as I like CT very much. But for Ports, is there some way to get links to FTLOP tasting notes to appear? Maybe it's because the FTLOP Database isn't free ? I admit I don't know much about how search engines work, maybe Google or WineSearcher make you pay to get these hits?

Just curious.

[Andy Velebil]

Hi Tom,

I've forwarded this question off so hope to have an answer for you soon.

Many thanks!

[Roy Hersh]

While the techie minds behind FTLOP ponder this question, let me mention that the TNDB is definitely FREE for anybody to use. They can store there own notes or look at the many thousands of user TN's from anybody except my own tasting notes. In order to see my TN's someone would have to be a paid subscriber to the newsletter, the rest are free and can be seen by anyone who is registered on the site. I do believe that David (who created the TNDB) had recently allowed the "bots" to creep our TNDB and obtain access to all but my own notes.

[Tom D.]

Thanks Andy.

Roy, I guess I login automatically every visit to FTLOP, so I'd forgotten members' TN's are free to the public. The whole "bot" thing is a big scary mystery to me, but I guess that's sort of what my original question was getting at. It does seem, since FTLOP offers links to WineSearcher, they should reciprocate if the technology allows.

[Roy Hersh]

Tom, I have seen FTLOP TN's when doing a Google search.

[Peter W. Meek]

<snip> The whole "bot" thing is a big scary mystery to me...<snip>

"Bots" (once called spiders or web crawlers) are how all the search engines (alta vista, google, etc.) got started. They collected as many URLs as possible, automatically visited each site, looked for links on those sites (which they added to their lists) and followed all those links. Eventually, any website that was linked to by another site got added to the lists. Then they made the results searchable. Search engines could not exist without "bots", and the web would be a poorer place without them.

Now, it is reasonable that certain websites may wish to restrict their appearance in search engines. (In the case of FTLOP, it is to reserve Roy's TNs for members.) There is a convention that if you place a certain file in any directories/folders you wish to restrict from appearing in search engine results, the engine will not show them. Before a "bot" searches a directory on a website, it first looks for this file. This is an Internet Protocol and is generally followed. Failure to follow this can result in sanctions by people who "run" the Internet. (No one really runs it, but how it works is controlled by a great many sysops who can make things difficult for people who mess with the generally accepted way of doing things.)

[Tom D.]

Tom, I have seen FTLOP TN's when doing a Google search.

I'm assuming the WineSearcher Tasting Notes tab is essentially a simple Google search, yet it doesn't seem like the WineSearcher results are identical to a comparable Google search, as FTLOP hits are very common in the latter.

Actually, after some more playing around at WineSearcher, the FTLOP notes do appear on the Tasting Notes tab, they just seem to have a tough time making it to the first page of search results. I looked up 1994 Taylor there, as a test, and it returned a fairly typical result: the first page is full of CellarTracker hits, mostly useless hits because they are for the WRONG vintages, then FTLOP hits start appearing very sporadically on the second page and beyond.

I admittedly don't understand what drives the ordering of the results of a these various search engines, but in a perfect world it would be nice to see FTLOP on the first page. As my brother is fond of saying: "One day, when I am king, things are going to be very different."