Impression of FlightGear

[MIG29pilot]

I have started this page in order to refine the our approach to bringing FGFS to the masses. So let's get busy.
To begin with, what happens when you type in flight simulator into google? What do you see first? You see X-Plane first. What will most people do? Click on X-Plane. What do they see? They see a stunning video with a loud proclamation stating that "what you see is what you get". And that video, for laymen at least, packs a punch.

About twenty results down the line or so, you finally see FlightGear, a little, inconspicuous result. If you decide to click on it (if), all you see at first is a big download button (I know this might have seemed like a good idea at first). Go to the gallery, and you see pics from 5 versions or so. This is not good!
What we need to do is

1. make a better homepage
2. create a promo video that packs twice the punch of x-plane's
3. update the gallery
4. bribe google to get fgfs first on the llist

[Lydiot]

It'd probably be best to take those four points and break them out into different threads and see if anyone can contribute.

[MIG29pilot]

good idea. Then we can post total progress here.

[Jabberwocky]

Okay, since I didn't find the "split up" threads, some thoughts:

1.) Better homepage
Well, this means probably a more eye catching design, making things a little easier to find and some easy (for non-pilots) understanding information how to get into this whole flying business. And text ...

2.) ... text, text, more text ... because bribing or not, search engines react basically only on things, they can read on your homepage. They can't read images or videos. Menas, if you wnt a high ranking for "flight simulator", you have to have text on your homepage that includes the term "flight-simulator".

3.) The importance of your homepage in a search result is determined by several factors, but the most important is, how many links from other relevant sites point to you. So long story short, you would need to organize a link-exchange program.

On a website-unrelated subject, FG to the masses could be a problem at the moment. Our MP system creaks and cracks with 60 pilots on at the same time. Now imagine 60,000. And 3.4 was the worst version since I am on FG, which is admittedly not that long, but the point still stands: We need to see what comes with 3.6 and how it works.
To get the masses, I think, we have to figure out fiorst, how to handle the masses.

J.

[sanhozay]

4. bribe google to get fgfs first on the llist

This is FGFS, not FIFA.

[Johan G]

2.) ... text, text, more text ... because bribing or not, search engines react basically only on things, they can read on your homepage. They can't read images or videos. Menas, if you wnt a high ranking for "flight simulator", you have to have text on your homepage that includes the term "flight-simulator".

Even just within the forum this would go a long way when people are looking for things. Basically, leaving nothing to search for, means there is no way of finding it. For example I often try add a description when embedding YouTube videos to forum posts. That basically is the only way one can find a specific video without burning a lot of time on sifting through some not so short forum topics.

3.) The importance of your homepage in a search result is determined by several factors, but the most important is, how many links from other relevant sites point to you. So long story short, you would need to organize a link-exchange program.

I sometimes also wonder about links between the flightgear.org subdomains. I tend to do that a lot, but rather for the convenience of myself later on as well as for curious readers than for the search engines.

In addition, thinking a bit ahead and leaving useful links can be very helpful for someone trying to grasp a new concept if he is not yet acquainted with the terminology and/or jargon in a specific context or domain.

[Lydiot]

4. bribe google to get fgfs first on the llist

This is FGFS, not FIFA.

Too soon...

[MIG29pilot]

What's FIFA?

[wkitty42]

don't you catch the news?

Fifa crisis: Ex-official Chuck Blazer details bribe-taking : bbc news : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/32998735

FWIW: FIFA == Fédération Internationale de Football Association

[Jabberwocky]

Hi,

@Johan G: Whether links from other subdomains count depends on two things, which are alas, handled a little different between Google and Microsoft/Yahoo:

1.) Link importanace is weighed in the whole formula and links entirely from the outside count always higher. For Google, it appears, it's about a factor 0.25 for subdomain links. For Bing/Yahoo (they use the same crawlers and databases), it seems to be something about 0.40. But those numbers are rather educated guestimations.

2.) Also the subdomain links have to come from "relevant" pages. Means, if you want to push for example the search term "flight simulator", the subdomain page also needs to include the words "flight simulator" in its text to be relevant. Google would alternatively take "flightsimulator" or even "flightsim", but MS/Yahoo have shorter alternative lists, so there it would be a little different with different spellings.

And yes, I am aware, that is a little simplified, this is only to explain the concept. Pages are for example missed by crawlers because the link is over an image or there is no robots.txt ... in short there are a lot of details, that need attention, but that is the gist. And then of course, they all count how many people search for the search term in the search engines and actually click then on your link.

J.

[japreja]

Getting flight gear in the number one position on search engines is not all that difficult. When I did a google search for "flight simulator", with quotes, I see it is in the 6th position. Thats awesome, and quite impressive, considering someone forgot to add the following meta tags to the main page

Code: Select all

<meta name"keywords" content="flight,simulator,gear,flightgear,sim" />
<meta name="description" content="No more than 255 charactor discription, including spaces" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days" />
<meta name="distribution" content="global">


If those tags are added the site WILL go up in ranking. It is also imprtant for other websites to link back to flightgear.org so the spiders see a multitude of websites linking to http://www.flightgear.org , I checked the page sources through firefox and was a bit surprised to see these tags missing....

Without the tags above, the only reason I can see flightgear achiving #6 is because they are listed on dmoz.org with its very own directory

[Jabberwocky]

Japreja, I suggest, you look up the Google documentation and their official statements about meta tags ... actually, they don't follow meta tags anymore since 20122 after they restricted following them in 2010 already to only those key words that also actually appear in the text.
They cancelled this because every "website pusher" wrote endless keyword lists in them with keywords unrelated to the content.

[japreja]

Japreja, I suggest, you look up the Google documentation and their official statements about meta tags ... actually, they don't follow meta tags anymore since 20122 after they restricted following them in 2010 already to only those key words that also actually appear in the text.
They cancelled this because every "website pusher" wrote endless keyword lists in them with keywords unrelated to the content.

Not to offend but you're mistaken Google Documentation . Keywords/Descriptions usage will never go away from any search engine or it would be pointless to use one. Search engines that have attempted what google tried back then have died off, google brought it back after webmaster complaints however they may not have stated it publicly.

Like I said add those meta tags to the main FG page and it WILL be #1 for "flight simulator" searches, not only on google but any search engine that pulls dmoz data dumps. It will take about 30 - 90 days.

The site template files most likely need to be edited or upgraded. Then again maybe its planned for the next release, but still it will take 30-90 days and should be scheduled before then.

[hamzaalloush]

i don't think the hollywood style trailer and props is a good theme for advertising flightgear.

as in FG, it must be made in "what you see is what you get", a video with a theme showing how flightgear can be customizable with different features, like the built-in instruction station, flight tracking web interface, easy and free multi player integration with the sim using provided servers, our excellent terrain out-of-the-box(better than FSX), visuals based on realism(ALS), great multi-platform performance with lower-end systems, showing example from fsweekend etc etc

Flightgear must appeal to the right crowd if we want to have growing community, not just the casual tester that excpect only great graphics(usually will give negative feedback)

[KL-666]

If you like a good fg film, get in touch with this guy:

http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=25738

The soundtrack is great too. I wonder if it is GPL.

Kind regards, Vincent