Use Ham Ferret to Search all the Web
for Amateur Radio Information

Isn't Ham Ferret Just Another Search Engine?

Yep.

But I built it to fix problems I've had researching ham radio topics with other search engines, for example:

• Other search engines often only index a small fraction of rich sites. The information you want often wasn't findable with other search engines.
• Other search engines generally index all of the web. This means you had to be a little careful in phrasing queries to get useful results relevant to ham radio. Try searching for just "sloper" on Google or Bing. ;)
• Other search engines often require content to be "fresh" to be highly rated. But there's plenty of great ham radio info that was uploaded to the web years ago, and remains very relevant today. The circuit schematic for a Hallicrafters SX-42A has not changed since before I was born.

I Think Ham Ferret Sucks!

Well, I hope you don't feel that way. Or, at least not totally.

But this is just a first hack at the project, and I expect to be improving it as time allows. These are among the improvements I'm hoping to make:

• Adding more content. Incredible as it seems, there are more than 282,177 ham radio web pages out there.
• Adding a way for webmasters to nominate their own websites for inclusion. Until I get this done, just write me at leverich@mtpinos.com.
• Improving the relevancy scoring.
• Dealing with "Rule 34" wreckage. (Rule 34 of the Internet says, "If it exists, there's pornography of it". There are an incredible number of pr0n sites with "amateur" in their names. I'm still picking them out of the textbase.)
• NO, I will not build a specialized search engine covering those other "amateur" sites. Please don't ask.

Have Fun!

I hope this will have at least some value to you. But mainly, have fun. See you on the air, and 73 de WA6I.