In the past months, I've submitted some new bug reports:
When I google those bug report numbers, I don't get many hits.
Question: Why aren't those kinds of bug reports publicly available?
Thanks.
Solved! Go to Solution.
I just want to add to this discussion that it would be really nice if I could search for a specific bug on support.esri.com:
Search with the BUG filter on >
If the _exact_ bug number is matched
Then - show the bug content OR return its status ('under review';'secret') if the content of the bug for any reason is unavailable to the user community
Else if it's not found, return 'no such bug number'
That would save us (me at least) a lot of time.
(I haven't been able to do that in the new support site - but as i remember it was possible on the old site.
disclaimer - i haven't studied the documentation of the new support search function yet 😀)
Bugs still don't seem to be googleable. I tried googling a fixed bug: BUG-000155660. But I didn't get any hits.
Yet, that bug is listed in the support site: https://support.esri.com/en-us/bug/definition-queries-do-not-appear-as-active-after-enabli-bug-00015...
Searching the support site works. But I still think bug information should show up in search engines.
fyi @AndrewMunn - this thread has been ongoing before and after the new support site migration re: SEO for bugs on the support website. Do you have any tips for getting the best search results for bugs? Or do you know if there is any focus on improving SEO related to bugs?
Hi @ChristianWells and @Bud
Our bug pages are searchable by Google and other search engines.
I think the issue that makes searching on Google inconsistent is that bugs are taken offline briefly for editing and then returned to the support site. After that we have to wait for Google to crawl through the support site again to update their search results.
The bugs are available through the support site search more quickly because our search tool indexes our own content more often than Google indexes our content.
We have tried to minimize the types of edits that cause bugs to be temporarily removed, but there still are some edits that trigger a copy review before they can be returned to the support site. We copy review the bugs so that no public field contains customer information or internal only information.
I don't think it is a matter of formatting the search query, using the bug id and "Esri" or "Esri support" should work fine.
Thanks for the reply @AndrewMunn and the recommendations for customers looking up this information.
I have wasted MONTHS of my time only to find that there were bugs associated with the very thing that had me spending thousands of hours trying to solve. Not once, not twice, but many times. Only to find out from Tech Support that there was a bug associated with that - and then us paying for premium tech support to find a workaround. As much as I love GIS and the Esri products, there is SO much that needs to be improved.
Here's an example of a bug that I reported in May 2023:
BUG-000158187 - When using the Truncate Table tool with a table that has a join, ArcGIS Pro returns an incorrect error message, "001400: Only the data owner may execute."
The bug is visible on the Esri Support site: https://support.esri.com/en-us/bug/when-using-the-truncate-table-tool-with-a-table-that-ha-bug-00015...
But strangely, the Esri Support page does not come up when I google that bug:
https://www.google.com/search?q=BUG-000158187+site%3Aesri.com
As far as I know, that bug wasn't "taken offline briefly for editing and then returned to the support site". The reason I say that is: I haven't received any email notifications about changes to that bug, such as comments or status changes. And I would think that bug is a very low priority, so I would be surprised if it has been acted on recently.
Hi Bud, thanks for this post. I am seeing the same behavior. I have reached out to our internal search engine optimization team to understand what might be happening. We may be able to improve the sitemap to make it easier for Google to find all the bug pages.
For our notes, BUG-000158187 is now googleable.
https://www.google.com/search?q=BUG-000158187+site%3Aesri.com