Searching NASA.gov For The Oval Office Moon Rock
Keith’s note: If you have been watching the space-themed photo ops fro the Oval office you have no doubt seen the Moon rock that President Biden likes to point at on the shelf. NASA can’t get enough of that Moon rock love either. Bill Nelson was sworn in next to it.
Imagine what your average citizen might do to find out more about that Moon rock after seeing something on TV or on social media or reading about it in a news paper. They’d go to NASA.gov. There is no picture of the Moon rock and Biden – but look, there is a search box, let’s use that. Guess what happens when you search for “Biden moon rock” and “Biden moonrock”. Nothing. When you search for “Biden Moon” you get a bunch of search results from the time when Biden was vice president. Of course if you go to Google and search zillions of pictures show up instantly.
You’d think that someone in NASA PAO would have the smarts to adjust the search engine for obvious searches such that things that real people are interested in might show up in a search engine – especially when no obvious mention is made on the NASA home page. I know that they can do this since they have made adjustments to search results to feature items after some of my earlier posts. This might be a good one to feature.
I just tried “Oval Office moon rock” and “Oval Office moonrock” and did not get that search result.
To clarify; you are pointing out that the search on the Nasa.gov site does not take you to the information that NASA has posted (I also verify your result).
I’ve been trying to analyze “why the confusion,” especially when it is your banner illustration.
As with many (but not all) institutional search options, I think that I have been conditioned away from attempting to use the Nasa.gov search engine as I rarely can find the info that I already know is posted by NASA.
So the confusion in my response was simply because searching on Nasa.gov wouldn’t occur to me!
Ditto. I guess I’m conditioned too. Searching inside NASA’s sites…especially the uppermost ones…has been so frustrating for so long I just don’t try any more. Funny sometimes how habits can develop.
I’ll try to pay closer attention to the details next time.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-…
was the first return on my search.
Did you use Google or NASA.gov search? I am talking about https://www.nasa.gov/- upper right hand corner.
I got it with googling. (?)