O/T - Google isn't your only friend

[David WE Roberts]

The general advice on this (and other) NGs when someone asks for a supplier of a tool or component is 'Google is your friend'.

True, but this does impose a filter on the real world where a lot of smaller suppliers just disappear from view.

I was looking for some plastic channel to go round my new wooden fascia and although I located a national supplier (who only supplied in bulk) I didn't find anywhere local.

Whilst visiting ScrewFix Direct and Ipswich Plastics (who didn't do any UV stabilised stuff) I noticed a small unit with the door rolled up and a lot of white plastic on display. Stopped for a chat, and found that there was a supplier of plastic bits just round the corner. They had a good stock of the bits that I wanted, and would also have delivered for free if I was prepared to wait a couple of days, as I was on part of their regular delivery route.

So a short wander around an industrial estate can turn up all sorts of useful items. :-)

Cheers

Dave R

[Tim Watts]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:53:48 +0100, "David WE Roberts" wibbled:

True. Though the question might be: why haven't they bought themselves a google sponsored ad for their locality only (you can do that - lots of tuning available and it need not be expensive).

The other question is: do they even have a website and is it google- friendly. Even my poxy little website which has very little of consequence shows up - so there isn't a lot of excuse for "not being seen".

I was looking for some odd shaped rubber extrusion strip for some ancient windows and found a specialist supplier of about 10000 different profiles right up the road - they did have a website, and although it wasn't shouting itself out in the listings, I did come across it by going on a few pages in google.

You don't even need anything expensive - a static website with a selection of your typical stock shown can prompt people to ring and you'd only need to update it occasionally.

[spamlet]

But so much of what does show up in google just turns out to be directories of company listings: most of whom don't have their websites listed even if they do actually have them: finding them rather than just mentions of them is a major slog, and getting past all these useless directories is a major hassle.

Then there are the sites that simply have the name of a product on - somewhere that google found but you can't - and, lately, sites that simply list products but don't sell them, or they are out of stock. Then there are the US sites that keep showing up even when you select UK only... grrrr. I've been looking for a dvd/cd r/w drive that will fit this old Inspiron

2600 laptop, for a couple of weeks, but there seems to be no way to sift through the data to be sure of one that will fit and work. And don't get me started on the ones that don't give an email address and the ones that do, but don't answer...

Grrr,

S

[Tim Watts]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:49:09 +0100, "spamlet" wibbled:

Yes. I did install a link farm filter a while back, but lost it. However, googling for "google link farm filter" seems to show some promise. Will investigate.

There are filters that improve matters - the simplest is to use a site blocking filter that you can trivially add too. Kelkoo usually goes in there first, followed by the others as they annoy me. I really don;t know what economic model these people use to publish vast amounts of hopelessy out of date information.

That, unfortunately is not easy for Google to solve - Maplin are one of the worst - proving a virtual URL to an item that doesn't exist, but leading to a page of useless crap and managing to get google to index the bloody thing.

Now that is Google's fault. They even go to the trouble to mask the dollar price by converting to pounds. It would be far more useful, if they wanted to be clever, to combine Translate and currency conversion and show results from the EU, which is usually more practical to order from.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Absolutely. Wanted a small quantity of steel sheet for car repair, and Googled on 'steel stockholders wandsworth'. Not one local one supplied steel sheet, according to them. Nearest - without going through the thousands of hits - was Enfield. Or mail order with obviously high carriage costs.

BTW, if you're in a large B&Q look at their prices for plain 1mm steel sheet...

[Nightjar]

Tim Watts wrote: ...

A lot of people are simply not computer literate and many don't want to be.

Even those who are might not want to expand. If there is already enough work to keep everyone busy, expansion could mean taking on more staff, which is a sudden increase in overheads without necessarily having a matching increase in income. Rapid expansion is also when a company is most likely to go bust. Having to buy for next month's needs with last month's income can be a serious problem.

...

I won't usually bother to contact people who don't give a bit more information than that, so I wouldn't think that very effective unless the choice of suppliers is very limited.

Colin Bignell

[spamlet]

useful it's the damn catalogues of catalogues that are the main pain.

Cheers though: this is a useful addition to the ad blocker add on I already had.

S

[dave]

Can you post a url for that site please. I am looking for strange rubber shaped profiles as well.

Dave

[Tim Watts]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:47:31 +0100, dave wibbled:

Sure Dave,

Here:

[Dave Osborne]

All useless as far as I'm concerned :-(

[spamlet]

Well I'm assuming that, like the rest of us here, you still have to search for things to buy, and are managing well without them: so I've copied them over. Cheers, S

[spamlet]

Hmm like the bit that goes: "Please browse around our website for more information on our products"

Not really surprising they don't show up very prominently in searches! :-) S

[dave]

Dave

[Tim Watts]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 22:29:19 +0100, "spamlet" wibbled:

That and having the complete catalogue as a PDF (which I don't think google yet introspects, though even then if they did, some just scan images of their catalogue with no machine readable text content).

I did find them by searching Rubber Mouldings Tunbridge Wells - but only because I know they are there! I'm always up at that estate as that's where Screwfix are, but that place has little hidden sub estates so you can go there for 5 years and not know half the non public-retail stuff that is there.

[Tim Watts]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:16:21 +0100, dave wibbled:

If you fill in the form, they send you a paper catalogue with 1:1 diagrams if that helps...

Or just print the PDF page as A4 full page - should get it reasonably close.

[Mike Barnes]

Tim Watts :

IME Google does OCR at least some such PDFs, but not very well. You have to give them points for trying.

[The Natural Philosopher]

This is another useful site

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Tim Watts saying something like:

All the rubber a boy could wish for. Must pass the info on - how are they as suppliers? Reliable, speedy, etc?

[Tim Watts]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:46:29 +0100, Grimly Curmudgeon wibbled:

Sorry - haven't ordered from them yet (it's for my ali windows, internal glazing seal). But for a very reasonable fee, you can subcontract me to go and eat curry in their office until they sort your problem out[1]

[1] Offer valid only on days I go to Screwfix or the cinema ;->