Forum / Search Engines / Privacy

Hi all,

Now that we're on this new forum, I have a fundamental question about how are people going to find us.

Right now, this forum is NOT being indexed by the search engines, so nobody is going to find us that way
(unless I turn that setting on).

So I guess I'm wondering, how did people find the eSens YahooGroup in the first place?  Link from another site?  Google search?  And if it was a search, did you find the group's description or one of the messages in the group?

Although the Yahoo Group was for years a public group indexed by the search engines, I ended up making it private because Yahoo was not properly hiding some people's email addresses (subjecting them to spam, or people "Googling them" and finding their posts, etc.)  Nabble may have better email address hiding, plus there is the capability to edit the archives, so we can delete email addresses that have not been properly hidden.

Plus, I see that on this forum, you can update your username with a pseudonym (to hide your real name), and that setting retroactively changes the username on all past posts associated with that email address.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about this, as nobody will join a group that they cannot find...

i found the (Yahoo) listserv about 5 months ago via a Google search when trying to find information about EMF/Smartmeters. I have felt so fortunate to have found it and I don't know how I would have found it otherwise.  Ellen

I am not certain of this - foggy memory - but I believe I found the eSens Yahoo! Group via a link that someone included in his/her post on another electrosensitivity-related messageboard (that may not have been very active - or was nearly defunct).  Or - this other messageboard may not have been strictly devoted to electrosensitivity - but this forum and its "host" website covered health issues that were similarly "alternative" (i.e. light sensitivity, chemical sensitivity).  This was in early-2010, I believe.  

During these 3.5 years, I had been able to access old eSens posts by doing a Google "Advanced Search" in which I typed in the basic Yahoo! web address of the group in the "site or domain" field.  I did this when I wanted to scan the group's archives on something specific such as "LCD TV" or "Furman Power Strip". (It seems that using the "Search" option on the group's main page left something to be desired - though things may have recently improved.)  Most of the eSens posts would have likely been "buried" by Google if I hadn't done such a targeted search.  

~Svetaswan

I found the forum by way of a  search which came up with a forum member's post.      

I, too, found this website by doing an EMF search and found a posting by a member of this group.