topic Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation? in All Things Community

Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation?

PaigeMiller — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:07:13 GMT

So this isn't really a SAS question, it's more of a question about the SAS website.

Google searches always return SAS 9.2 documentation at

https://support.sas.com/documentation

It never returns the latest documentation for SAS 9.4 at

https://documentation.sas.com

Now, I know that I can search on Google like this:

proc logistic site:documentation.sas.com

and that forces Google to use only results from documentation.sas.com (which is the 9.4 documentation), but that's a lot of extra typing and a lot of potential for typos.

So, can anything be done by the SAS webmaster to re-direct Google to the newest documentation?

Re: Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation?

ChrisHemedinger — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:14:44 GMT

Good question, @PaigeMiller. SAS 9.2 doc lives on because some customers still use SAS 9.2, so it can't be archived yet. And Google has a long memory of this highly visited resource -- and lots of other websites link to it, keeping it relevant in the eyes of search engines. Thankfully, the SAS 9.1.3 doc has gone into hiding, for the most part.

That said, the support.sas.com search has recently been revamped, and continues to improve. Check out the search results for "proc logistic" or your favorite term.

I'll forward your comment to our documentation team -- I know this is something they are working on improving.

Re: Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation?

PaigeMiller — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:19:52 GMT

Ok, that helps, in the sense that I can bookmark that search page, and now I don't have to type all that extra stuff into Google. I still find it confusing that I know I have SAS 9.4, but I don't really know what version of SAS/STAT I have. In my mind, I think if I know that I have 9.4, I should be able to search for 9.4 and not have to worry about SAS/STAT is 14.3 and IML is some other version (I don't know what IML is) and what versions of other packages within SAS I have.

Re: Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation?

PaigeMiller — Sun, 22 Jul 2018 15:50:11 GMT

Okay, @ChrisHemedinger, here's my follow-up question.

Is there a URL I can bookmark that forces the search to only search for 9.4 documentation? The URL https://support.sas.com/en/search.html allows you to select, via a drop-down menu, that you only want SAS 9.4 documentation, but I'm hoping you can come up with a URL that avoids the necessity of using a drop-down menu each time.

Re: Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation?

ChrisHemedinger — Sun, 22 Jul 2018 15:58:01 GMT

You could start your doc search here, at the programming reference. Click the magnifying glass "search" icon to get started.

Re: Why doesn't Google search find the SAS 9.4 documentation?

PaigeMiller — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 13:50:13 GMT

Well, what I really really really want is to do a search and only come up with SAS 9.4 documentation, because that's 99.9% of what I use. I don't want a search that comes up with both SAS 9.4 and SAS Viya documentation.

So your first link has a dropdown that lets me specify that I only want SAS 9.4 results. After playing around with it, I decided to modify the URL to

https://support.sas.com/en/search.html?fq=releasesystem%3A9.4

which seems to force the search to only SAS 9.4 results.