How would I go about getting Google to index my mailing list for searching?

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Request for Question Clarification by aceresearcher-ga on 17 Apr 2003 15:12 PDT

Greetings, cjcollier!

Is your mailing list on an html page, in a database, or in a text,
Word, Excel or other format of document?

When you ask about getting Google to index your mailing list, do you
mean that you want your mailing list to show up in Google Search
Results, that you want to be able to search your own mailing list
using the Google Search facility, or some other functionality?

The answers to these Questions will better assist Researchers to
provide you with the information you need.

Regards,

aceresearcher

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Clarification of Question by cjcollier-ga on 17 Apr 2003 15:47 PDT

Ahem.

I want google to index my mailing list archives at

http://lists.colliertech.org/pipermail/poli-discuss/

I assume that this is what google groups does, which is why I asked
here ;)

If not, I s'pose I should get to writing a MailMan plugin to allow
mailing list members to search the list for subject/to/from/body
content - Or perhaps Google might consider implementing such a
feature.

Hello again, cjcollier!

I can think of three different solutions which may solve your request.

1. "Google Groups" is Google's collection of postings in Web Forums
and Usenet groups. You can request that your web Forum be added to the
list of Groups that the Googlebot indexes:
"14. How can I ask for a newsgroup to be added? 
Send a message to groups-support@google.com that includes the name of
the newsgroup you would like to have added to the archive. Your
request will be reviewed, and if it's accepted, the newsgroup will be
added within a few days. Each request is evaluated to determine the
value of the information the newsgroup contains, but there are no
guarantees that a given newsgroup will be added. Please do not send
more than one request to add a particular newsgroup as this slows the
evaluation process and does not affect the ultimate outcome.

Note: Google maintains an archive of messages posted to Usenet, but we
do not create the newsgroups that appear there. That is done through a
process described in detail here. Once your newsgroup has been
officially created and approved by the usenet community, you can
request that it be added to the archive in Google Groups. It's
important to note that Google cannot add newsgroups that are only
available on one specific news server, unless the administrator of
that news server decides to propagate those newsgroups throughout the
world-wide usenet."
://www.google.com/googlegroups/help.html#added


2. You can submit your archives to be crawled by the Googlebot:
://www.google.com/addurl.html

Because your root URL (
http://lists.colliertech.org/pipermail/poli-discuss ) does not really
contain any text content as a website normally does, to ensure that
the Googlebot sees your content, I recommend that you submit each
month's URL, rather than the root URL:
http://lists.colliertech.org/pipermail/poli-discuss/2003-April/thread.html
http://lists.colliertech.org/pipermail/poli-discuss/2003-March/thread.html


3. You can add the Google Search Engine to your site, so that the
people who frequent your Forum can Search all the posts by keyword:
"Google's WebSearch enables your site visitors to search the Internet.
With Google's Free WebSearch, you can co-brand search results with
your color scheme and logo.

The optional Free SiteSearch enables you to restrict searches to the
domain(s) you specify."
://www.google.com/services/free.html


Search Strategy

I found this information by clicking on the "Jobs, Press, & Help"
hyperlink at the bottom of the main Google page:
://www.google.com/about.html

and by clicking on the "Groups Help" hyperlink to the right of the
search box on the "Google Groups" page ( http://groups.google.com ):
http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html


Before Rating this Answer, if you have any questions about this
information, please post a Request for Clarification.
   
I hope that this Answer enables you to get your site well-indexed and
searchable!
   
Regards,   
   
aceresearcher

Thank you so much.  I didn't expect such an expansive answer for only $2.

Thank you for the excellent rating and the generous tip, cjcollier!

Your Question has the distinction of being my 200th Answer. :-)

ace