[Dspace-general] Google search results bypass metadata records

[MacKenzie Smith]

Hi Julie,

This is very interesting... Google Scholar's indexing of item metadata 
vs bitstreams has evolved over the years. Early on they thought users 
were absolutely not interested in seeing item records -- they want to go 
directly to the bitstreams -- but I think that belief has changed and 
now they are definitely indexing both item metadata and bitstreams.

In this case, I wasn't able to reproduce the problem in Google Scholar. 
I searched by terms that were only in the metadata and only in the PDF, 
and in all cases GS took me to the item record first... I couldn't find 
a search that took me directly to the bitstream (although I've seen that 
behavior in the past). Do you know how your user got to that result?

Anyway, assuming there are still cases where GS takes the user directly 
to the bitstream, I think they'd be interested in your feedback. The 
particular bitstream you provided is a great example of why a user might 
need to go through an item record... the bitstream has absolutely no 
embedded metadata or other context to help the user figure out what 
they're looking at.

Maybe Rob Tansley can also comment, or we can take this up again with 
Anurag at Google Scholar.

MacKenzie
>
> We’ve had complaints from users who have found out-of-context DSpace 
> documents with Google searches, such as
> _https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/2022/1333/1/7(1)81-82.pdf_ 
> <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/2022/1333/1/7%281%2981-82.pdf> 
>
>
> There is, of course, a DSpace metadata record, but the Google search 
> retrieves the document itself with no link to the metadata record. 
> We’re considering disallowing access to the bitstream path so that 
> users will not be confronted with raw documents with no metadata 
> context, but do not want to lose the full-text searching 
> functionality. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?
>
> Thanks in advance for help.
>
> Julie Bobay, Director for Scholarly Communication Initiatives
> Indiana University Bloomington Libraries
> Wells Library E1060
> Bloomington, IN 47405
> 812-855-7743
>


-- 
MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries