Branding guide makes searching for Angular 2+ content difficult

mbeckenbach commented 7 years ago

I'm submitting a ... (check one with "x")

[x ] feature request

Maybe it qould be good to talk to the google search guys as your new branding guide makes it hard to find blog posts for angular 2+.

Search terms like 'angular router' very often result in older angularjs blog posts.

DaniDPX commented 7 years ago

True!

lazarljubenovic commented 7 years ago

I usually append my searches with -angularjs, which excludes it from keywords. Pretty effective.

spock123 commented 7 years ago

I usually just search for results within last 4-6 months

IgorMinar commented 7 years ago

@mbeckenbach just fyi: we don't have a special access to the Google index. Google search doesn't favor one site over another just because we work for Google.

AnianZ commented 7 years ago

I don't think there is a fast way to fix this, it probably has to grow on it's own. But if the new branding ist emphasized in the docs and people here and on Stack Overflow are made more aware of the versioning it should fix itself over time. Meanwhile filtering the google results as @lazarljubenovic and @spock123 suggested should help a lot.

IgorMinar commented 7 years ago

We are taking several steps to make this better. // @StephenFluin

StephenFluin commented 7 years ago

Google search bases its search results on the knowledge it finds across the internet, as well as on lots of signals. Before 2.0.0, Angular and AngularJS were treated by much of the internet as synonyms. We've done a few things like splitting the wikipedia article, as well as working with the community to correct some of the major uses of these terms in the wrong way.

I've already begun to see the search results improve, but obviously there are still problems, like the one you mention. We're working internally to see what else we can do to help improve this situation, but to maintain the integrity of search, we have no direct access.

Previously these terms were used ambiguously (angular vs angularJS), so it will take some more time before any search engine gets it 100% right. The tips mentioned above and things like adding "site:angular.io" if you want results from our docs site can help a ton.

icenold commented 7 years ago

We're working internally to see what else we can do to help improve this situation, but to maintain the integrity of search, we have no direct access. Renaming it to AngularTS would be easier

lazarljubenovic commented 7 years ago

Yup, let's just keep renaming it, that's totally gonna solve the poblem. :grin:

ovangle commented 7 years ago

It should be noted that naming and searching packages published on npm is also annoyingly difficult. A lot of packages are already named angular-* or ng-* which only support AngularJS and are unlikely to be ported. It seemed for a while that people were going to adopt an angular2-* naming scheme, but that's not possible now.

These packages are all going to remain neglected and polluting the npm namespace forever, so it's not going to get any easier after a couple of years (unlike the search/blog problem)...

petebacondarwin commented 6 years ago

@StephenFluin are we going to do anything about this or should we close it as outside our boundary of ability?

StephenFluin commented 6 years ago

We continue to monitor the issue and things definitely seem to be getting better (anecdotally, I'm seeing about 60% of my searches returning the right thing, up from around 20%). There's no action right now aside from continuing to help the community use the names consistently and ensure that we are doing the right SEO things on our website. I'm going to close as there's no concrete action.

rwmb commented 6 years ago

I agree with @icenold, the guys from #19318, #20543 and many others that rebranding would make it a lot better to work with angular 2/4/5 not only regarding search engines but would reduce the confusion overall. We understand how you guys got in this problem, your marketing team didn't account for this and this kind of thing can happen to anyone, but renaming a product is not the end of the world... Even changing to "AngularTS" would be a lot easier than changing from "Angular 2/4/5" to only "Angular". Most people don't go after a solution if they don't realize they have a problem. I believe you guys would have total support from the community for this change.

icenold commented 6 years ago

I agree with @icenold, the guys from #19318, #20543 and many others that rebranding would make it a lot better to work with angular 2/4/5 not only regarding search engines but would reduce the confusion overall. We understand how you guys got in this problem, your marketing team didn't account for this and this kind of thing can happen to anyone, but renaming a product is not the end of the world... Even changing to "AngularTS" would be a lot easier than changing from "Angular 2/4/5" to only "Angular". Most people don't go after a solution if they don't realize they have a problem. I believe you guys would have total support from the community for this change.

Finally! someone who understands.

Yup, let's just keep renaming it, that's totally gonna solve the poblem. :grin:

If it solves the problem by ditching angularjs results then why not? Its not like we are proposing to change the lastname of your wife or something so there is really no need to overreact.

lazarljubenovic commented 6 years ago

I am genuinely surprised by people who keep naming it "Angular 2/4/5". Just how many numbers will they keep sticking together before they realize that something is wrong with naming it like this? I really can't imagine a developer thinking that a proper name for something is "Angular 2/4/5/6/7/8/9" when talking about it.

The community just needs to raise awareness about the naming. All we need are a few popular blog posts that have a bold disclaimer at the beginning talking about the fact that Angular is using semver and shortly explaining a simple fact. Seriously, it takes three simple sentences to understand it.

Angular is, since version 2, mostly backward compatible and follows semver. Versions after 2.0.0 are called simply "Angular" (not "Angular 2"), and in most cases there is no need to specify versions. If you are talking about specific version of Angular, say "Angular in version 4.3.2", not "Angular 4".

The reason why "Angular 2/4/5" carries on is because of a cycle that goes like this:

People are not used to "new" name.
Random bloggers writing clickbait posts keep using names "Angular 2/4/5" because that's the only way they can drive people who fall for clickbait titles (newcomers).
Newcomer only ever sees "Angular 2/4/5" at notation and keeps using it in his questions on Stack Overflow.

There you go: you now have a toxic cycle made of someone's greed to get people to read their "Ten Super Handy Tricks For Your Angular 2/4/5/6/7/8/9 Application!".

rwmb commented 6 years ago

@lazarljubenovic I understand what you meant, I agree that it's not good, but just calling it Angular doesn't make things easier, that's the reason of the discussion.

mlc-mlapis commented 6 years ago

... I am asking myself ... Why don't I have the same problem? ... I was using AngularJS for 2 year and now Angular and I am still surprised a bit why and where the problem exists for some other people.

icenold commented 6 years ago

... I am asking myself ... Why don't I have the same problem? ... I was using AngularJS for 2 year and now Angular and I am still surprised a bit why and where the problem exists for some other people.

I am not hungry, therefor kids in Africa are not hungry

angular / angular

Branding guide makes searching for Angular 2+ content difficult #14802