[JoeF]

When people search for hang gliding items, the Google result pages will have a certain US Hawks presence. Just how much presence for US Hawks pages will depend on many factors.

One way to search our US Hawks site without Google is using the Search tool that Bob has included. That is a strong method.

Another way to search US Hawks site is by typing in the Google search tool the following with no space after the colon. And then type a keyword. If you want to search for a firm phrase, then put quotation marks around the phrase. Example

site:USHawks.org "Safe-Splat" gave the following result page: Click THE WORD: HERE
And if I use only the general Google search for the quotation-marked phrase, the result is About 2,290 results which cover way beyond the US Hawks site. But in my trial, US Hawks won a first spot report on the more general report: GeneralReport The US Hawks holds about 20% of all Internet for the exact phrase "Safe-Splat".

[Bob Kuczewski]

When people search for hang gliding items, the Google result pages will have a certain US Hawks presence. Just how much presence for US Hawks pages will depend on many factors.

Hi Joe,

Thanks for that report and for all you've done to promote this site by posting links!!!   

The term "Safe-Splat" is probably a unique enough oxymoron that it is only found in the rich and colorful context of Faust-speak.  

I just searched for the phrase "hang gliding" and the US Hawks came up on Google page 22.   
But when I searched for "hang gliding association", we came up second only to USHPA.   

I think one of the biggest things that hurts us is that Google ranks sites based on links from other related sites. That's why Jack has banned ANY links to the US Hawks. He knows that Google's logic is that if hanggliding.org is a very popular hang gliding site and it doesn't have even one single link to the US Hawks, then how important could the US Hawks be in the world of hang gliding? That's why Jack's software automatically changes ANY link to ushawks.org into something like "loserville.org". He doesn't want even one link pointing to us.

That's why we've really got an uphill struggle on our hands, and I really appreciate everyone who's posted links to the US Hawks from their own sites and forums. That will really help. It would also help if anyone on hanggliding.org would start to ask why the links that they put in their own posts get changed. I'm sure Jack will say something generic like "Bob and Scott are poison to the sport", but if you press for the real reason, you'll find that Jack won't have any good answers.

Having said all of that, I do feel a new sense of life in the US Hawks. We may be on the verge of "breaking out" with so many new members starting to post, and with our old familiar faces remaining strong. I've also heard of more people listing "ushawks.org" in their signature lines on other forums. So this might be our time.