Stamp Column Archives

Glassine Surfer February 2004

Every so often, I'd spend more ink on fewer sites to give readers a fuller sense of the site, but lately I've opted for mentioning as many as I could, knowing that it only costs a mouse click to visit a site and the best way to keep a good site running is with feedback and visitors.

In the past, I only mentioned sites worth mentioning. Did you ever notice that I never panned a site or uttered a disparaging word? It's not that I'm home on the range, but I feel negative notices are a waste of space, when so much good needs your attention. Do you think I should change my point-of-view?

On the other hand, I hardly ever mention a commercial or a dealer's site unless it's some sort of online sales service like eBay or APS. I'm not adverse to publicizing them, but I've always thought that being editorially neutral was the safe, middle course. Do you think it's time to put dealer sites on the table?

I'm only trying to tickle your imagination and fire up your keyboard. Now I have more time to find, develope, and write, and am open to all your suggestions. And in essence you will probably get something very close to what you're looking for.

If you don't know, it's mike @ glassinesurfer.com

Searching for Stamps

Over 4214 stamp links are housed at Joe Luft's internet site. This large collection of links has been a mainstay of the Web since the mid-nineties. It's a simple system. Webmasters can go to Luft's and add their link through an online form. Then every so often a pile of new links is added to site.

Take a trip over to the site. It's a really simple and efficient way of keeping track of what's new, but because Luft doesn't editorialize about the sites, massive content sites are listed cheek by jowl with one-page dealer lists.

Joseph Luft's Philatelic Resources on the Web
http://my.execpc.com/~joeluft/resource.html

I went to Google and typed in "stamp collecting directory" and one of the results was "Search Stamps Philatelic Directory." It was new to me, and the front page looked interesting. But as I moused and clicked, it seemed that the site had more to do with comics and collecting than stamps.

I didn't want to spend an hour ferreting out what stamp content may have been lurking down below, but the episode is illustrative of what's happening on the Web and on Google these days.

The first result in my search was actually a little web search utility that feeds customers to other sales sites. It looks and feels like information and content, but it's just another layer of clicking.

The first ten results were also choked with other little web search utilities, and the sites that would really help newbie and intermediate stamp collectors were not to be found. The Glassine Surfer site was listed on the front page, but it ought to have been cheek by jowl with the APS, Linn's, and Joe Luft.

Content sites, those you love to read, are losing ground to search- engine-optimized sites, those whose technical expertise can overcome empty content.

A search engine employs a formula to rank sites, and as soon as a tech savvy webmaster figures out the formula he or she can pretty much have their way with a search engine. They don't need relevance or content, just some experience tweaking their website code.

For instance, if you type in "miserable failure" the first result is the White House's bio of George W. Bush. This happens because thousands of webmasters link to that page using the words "miserable failure" for the link's text.

If you have seen other examples of thwarted searches, post them to me. I'm a collector. It's what I do.

Printers

Glenn H. Morgan is the webmaster of Stampprinters.info. (Yes, ".info" is right.) The site is a very well done catalog of every printer in the world who is known to have produced stamps from 1840 to 2003.

Thanks for reading the “Glassine Surfer.”