RE: Ideas for Help 2.0

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

> From: Rick Stone
[...] 
> 
> So sure, build in all the "kickass" features you like. But don't be
> surprised to discover later that the "help", has a new first step. Open
> the browser and head to Google...

For both Microsoft Word and MadCap Flare, that is exactly my 
first step. And as someone mentioned somewhere, the single 
most disheartening thing to get back from a Google search 
is a results page where only the first two or three items 
really have anything at all to do with what you need, 
and those all point to the same post in an obscure forum, 
from 2005, with either zero answers or a couple of "me too" 
replies and no other activity.

Knowing how relentlessly Google sifts and analyses our 
every action, I wonder if they have stats somewhere showing 
a correlation between "finding" that kind of result, 
followed by launching a new search... for "suicide hot-line 
<my city>"...

 -kevin

PS: My first remark above is because Microsoft has all KINDS 
of material that isn't actual help, and Flare has probably 
got exactly what you need from any given query, but it could 
be anywhere in the search return of 321 "hits"... 319 of 
which have you shaking your head and wondering how in the 
world...   What Flare needs is the Google search engine to 
dig through their pile-of-everything and produce the needed 
pages, which (mostly) ARE in there somewhere. 
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