# WR Dictionary as the premier dictionary on the net



## TimLA

Hello all,

A technical question for the group, and perhaps for Mike.

Of late I've been putting single Italian words into Google (I started the process some time ago by accident),
and more often than not I find that in the top few hits I'll get a dictionary based translation from Wiktionary.
I almost never see a translation from WR.

Being the fan I am of WR, I say to myself "Why can't WR be at the top of the hit list?".

I'm guessing part of the issue is that the WR dictionary resides in a database
(MySQL I assume, based on some of the error messages I've seen)
and therefore is not generally "visible" to search engines.

Is there something that can be done to make WR more "visible" to Google?
Huge header tags with large numbers of words in them?


----------



## Vanda

For Portuguese words WR is second or third to appear in general, but I do use the Portuguese, Spanish and English WR dictionaries _all the time the whole day._ It might have to do with that.


----------



## mkellogg

Hi Tim,

It is quite difficult.  I try my best, but Google is tough to figure out.  The biggest problem, I think, is that Google declares pages to be in either English or Italian.  This doesn't work well for pages like ours that are bilingual.  If Google thinks that the page is in English it will rank better in the US, and if it thinks that a dictionary page is in Italian, it will rank better in Italy. I have a feeling that the pages you are looking for do better on google.it.

I'll keep trying though.  Getting the pages in Google is one of my jobs!


----------



## Dlyons

TimLA said:


> more often than not I find that in the top few hits I'll get a dictionary based translation from Wiktionary.
> I almost never see a translation from WR.
> 
> Is there something that can be done to make WR more "visible" to Google?
> Huge header tags with large numbers of words in them?



1) Google deliberately ranks Wiki very high in search results.  So it's hard to score higher than Wiki in the Google ranking algorithm.

2) "Huge header tags" etc are probably counter-productive.  Google have to guard against spammers and marketeers trying to manipulate their ranking, so they take countermeasures.  Even to the point of removing sites entirely (although they wouldn't go that far with a reputable site like WordRef.)


----------



## TimLA

Dlyons said:


> 1) Google deliberately ranks Wiki very high in search results. So it's hard to score higher than Wiki in the Google ranking algorithm.
> 
> 2) "Huge header tags" etc are probably counter-productive. Google have to guard against spammers and marketeers trying to manipulate their ranking, so they take countermeasures. Even to the point of removing sites entirely (although they wouldn't go that far with a reputable site like WordRef.)


 
1. Very interesting, thanks! I wonder if there is any information on the ranking algorithm, or is it part of their "secret"?

2. Aha! Yes, I've noted that in highly technical and complex searches, the "spam sites" with large headers tend to be at the bottom of the list.


----------



## mkellogg

One note.  Tim sent me a link to some of his searches.  If you do seek out the WordReference dictionary entry from far down in the Google results, Google will notice and rank WR better.   (The more a site gets clicked, the higher it generally ranks.)


----------



## Paulfromitaly

mkellogg said:


> One note.  Tim sent me a link to some of his searches.  If you do seek out the WordReference dictionary entry from far down in the Google results, Google will notice and rank WR better.   (The more a site gets clicked, the higher it generally ranks.)


Do you know whether starring WordReference would help it get a better rank too?

Star your favourites


----------



## mkellogg

Paulfromitaly said:


> Do you know whether starring WordReference would help it get a better rank too?


Google doesn't say much what goes into their algorithm, but I doubt that one has much effect.


----------



## TimLA

Well, here's some good news!
I put the Spanish "opresiva" into Google and guess what popped up right at #1!!??
Hooray!

So now the question is, "What is different about the Spanish dictionary?".


----------

