by Paul Webster » Sun Mar 14, 2021 1:08 pm
Two different things being covered here. Hopefully the route search is better than what there was before - it's certainly getting use from far more people.
From susanj post onwards, I think we're talking about the list of all new search functions being where there used to be Google search.
It might seem strange, so here's the background / reasons we've done this:
- the Google search showed increasing amounts of Google ads - the top half of the result page was adverts, which meant than half or more of visitors were coming to Walkhighlands, searching, and getting sent off to a business rather than finding the right bit of WH which was the intention of the search box. Quite a few people have complained about something that they thought was on Walkhighlands when it wasn't (it just came up on Google's part of the result page).
- many people were not finding the WH search functions for walk routes, or for accommodation, judging by the search terms entered.
- we've now removed all Google and automated ads from every part of Walkhighlands. This started with the forum having all ads removed a few years ago. Earlier this year we removed all automated Google-type ads from articles, news stories and from walk descriptions. The search function (initially forgotten!) was the only bit of automated ads that was still on Walkhighlands. I looked into paying Google to remove the ads, which is possible but means a charge of £15,000 a year for their ad-free search.
- there's also a GDPR issue. When you do a Google search, google use what you search for for ad personalisation elsewhere (.e.g. on their own site). Legally, this requires that users have given advance consent given via the site being searched, which means that really needs one of those GDPR popup boxes that are on alot of media sites and require you to click and give permissions for use of data in advertising. We were always opted opt of allowing this on our own Google-powered ads, before we removed them. I think these boxes are incredibly annoying, and would rather have a strict policy protecting user privacy and no data going to Google.
We've tried to improve all the internal ad-free search functions which don't rely on Google data , and added new ones (such as for articles etc. which wasn't possible before).
On the specific point, we could add a 'Hills search' option that searched for names. I kind of thought that if you already know the hill you are looking for, you can simply go to it via the hills menu. But I can see that some people might think typing in a name is more convenient (if confident with spelling!)
A possible last resort would be to have Google search at the bottom of the search type lists, and you have to agree to them taking your data before the search goes ahead (rather than having that across the site).
I hope that makes sense; I don't think there is an ideal solution.