How To Find The Best Information On Africa.

What is it that makes people interested in Africa?

Is Africa the dark continent? Is it the people,South Africa or adventure that fascinates you? Do you want knowledge? Maybe you can investigate the land of your ancestors?

But how do you find the best information on Africa. The best solutions involve a mix of several things: Take a class at the community college ;Ask an African,if you know one;Ask your friends or neighbors . This is what you had to do yesterday: before the information superhighway.

Even if you start your quest at a library, public or private, you will find that the information on Africa is available via computer, possibly the same internet that you have at your home.

There are two kinds of web resources that you will see over and over again: the first kind is a search engine, you know, the old standards like Yahoo Search! , Ask.com or newer ones like Wikiseek , Baidu, ChaCha or a directory of existing sites: like DMOZ, which use humans working as librarians to pour over the web sites, find the ones dealing with Africa and categorize them for you.

There are difficulties with both of these methods: Google's search engine strategy for African sites is strongly influenced by the internet business of SEO (search engine optimization) which attempts to defeat Google's methods to increase a web site's back-links and hence make it seem better than it really is. This makes it harder to find the real good sources for information on Africa. SEO is big business for sites that make money on the internet, because search engines can make or break a web site. There are 'black hat' and 'white hat' people useing these techniques who have not the slightest interest in Africa. In fact, any search engine using computer algorithms to analyse text can totally ignore nuances of meaning like, searching for 'teaching profession' and get you tons of listings about 'learn acupuncture' , or even worse, a rock band with the name 'The cloudy African Professors". How many times haveyou had to dig down to the fifth page of the web search to find something really useful about Africa? More times than you wish!

A directory organized by humans like DMOZ may not have that kind of lanugage problem, but the editors of those directories are volunteers, with limited time and have to obey some odd rules about what makes an appropriate web site: some kinds of information rich sites can't even get listed. In fact, the decisions about what is good or not is under in the hands of a very few people rules that are just too rigid: a junior editor often has a decision overturned by a another editor sometimes, for the most obscure reasons. They are well meaning, but can they really speak to be knowledgeable about all they do? The websites that are accepted may have to wait for months to get accepted , if ever. And the categories are limited, with few places to put new concepts. It takes months for a category to be approved: if at all.

A successful response has been the wikipedia, where everyone can update the information: and amazingly enough, wikipedia has a very good reputation of being authoritative, precise and, well, generally useful.

Now, in September 2008, there is a new alternative in web site ranking directories that uses the power of the public to answer the question of which site is best, or at least as they put it: "which site has the most vava-voom!" That new site is http://vava.vu/?Tag=Africa , a web domain out of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. Vava.vu will let any web site be entered to be rated by the general public and given the tag Africa. The judging is simple: a web site about Africa has a rank and a 'statistical strength' associated with it: When someone visits vava.vu, those sites with weaker strength are put side by side, and it is up to the visitor to say which of the two is more appropriate. When enough votes are cast, the visitor will see the real top ten sites about Africa : These sites are the ones that you, the public has judged. The idea is honest in that a visitor only can compare two sites at a time: one will win and one will not. A visitor can't give a yea or nay to one site by itself because that would skew the results. Some sites will consistantly prevail over other sites.

So if you are interested in Africa , you can go find the answers in several areas: Locally in the library, from friends, or on the internet at your favorite search engine, a directory like DMOZ or wikipedia. Or with the new alternative on the block: http://vava.vu/?Tag=africa

J. Chord is fascinated by the internet since before it started. Up to speed on technology he now follows the difficulties people have in using the information about Africa that is so near, yet so far.

Please Rate The Above Article From The SE Optimization & Marketing Category
Article Title: How To Find The Best Information On Africa.

Syndicate SE Optimization & Marketing Related Articles Via RSS!

Boost your websites' search engine ranking! Attract more repeat visitors!
Automatically, consistently update your content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS). To syndicate the above article and other SE Optimization & Marketing related articles on your blog or site, simply click on the XML Icon above to grab the RSS feed -- It's FREE!