This was mentioned elsewhere, but I think it deserves a unique entry, given its range of coverage.

I never cease to be amazed at how something so all-embracing and significant can escape the mighty web search engines, especially if it, and its content figure highly in searches I have made. This has never popped in any searches I've made regarding Kintyre, Campbeltown, Machrihanish, the war(s), or any of the many subjects that I've been hunting for information on.

I warn you not to sit down with a cup tea or coffee and a packet of biscuits or you may be declared missing - this really is close on 450 pages of detailed information regarding Kintyre and World War II in the period 1939 - 1945. Not only does it cover its own subject, it also deals in some detail with the how those connections related to the worldwide conflict, and has much information relating to issues arising in far of lands and distant shores.

It also answers a number of questions that have been pondered in here, not least of which (assuming its information is accurate) the precise location of the Campbeltown Loch Anti-Submarine Boom, and its ends.

There are details of the bombing raids in the area, and even a photograph of Archibald Stewart's house afterwards.

The full publication can be downloaded online, from:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1461313/Kintyre-At-War-1939-1945

You can (try and) read it online, but it's a big book!

Better to register a username and password, after which you are free to download the book as a pdf, and read at you leisure.

I have to admit I've never even come across the host site before, so there may be more to be had for the info-hungry.

As it is, all SeSco's Kintyre content is up for review after reading this, as some items are sorely lacking info provided in this book, as are a number of nearby stories.

There's also a whole load of new and interesting spots identified that would make interesting articles too, not generally known elsewhere.

I think I'll have to electronically burn my copy now, or I'll never get anything else done until sometime around 2010

Cheers. Is that from the BAJR website? I'm sure I saw the same thing there recently but couldn't get it to download.

A good find and what a lot of work went into it.  I like the instructions for printing it off!

I have to say that I think search engines are the weak point of the internet.  I get infuriated when the same site comes up time after time on a search.  Surely it cannot be that difficult to put in a "couple of lines of code" that basically says :-  Has this site alreday been displayed? Then do not show it again.

Identified earlier, in the thread on HMS Osprey I think

The book is available on CD for £6:

http://groups.msn.com/Kintyre/kintyreatwarcd.msnw

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to search the web, which contains millions of potential 'hits' for what are usually very, very badly phrased search criteria by non-computer literate people. The search engine has to look at article titles (if they have one), then "read" the whole article or page to see if it contains anything remotely like the given criteria, then judge if what it has found is close, or potentially relevant.

You then have the scum that fills their advertising pages with words that are likely to be found by search engines while looking for things that are nothing to do with what they are selling. They will attempt to 'draw in' searches with innocent words and phrases repeated many times, to make their page look like a 'good find'. This is combined with hidden words in the code of the page, which searches were supposed to use to find relevant pages. These are now largely ignored, as spam used has rendered them worthless, and search engines now ignore pages with numerous repeats of target words and phrases. But it's really a lot more complex than this suggests.

So, as well as email, spammers have ruined the search power of the web.

Similar pages 'are' filtered out, by Google at least, and Clusty does its grouping trick which

With a properly phrased search ie one that doesn't contain common words (never include things like 'the' for example ), phrases, or words that are any sort of name, then Google returns few results, with a message along the lines of "search has returned 25 results with another 2,000 similar results hidden, click to show these",

Just had a good example of how search engines can be flummoxed.

Without going into the specific, I have been trying on and off to find some info about a government establishment which I had the name of, but no clue as to what it did.

I'd been trying odd searches and combinations of name and location, but none came up with anything, even though the name was partially unique, and I used search engines that I know are competitors, so are not sharing found information, even though are obviously searching the same place.

The other day, I got a new word to use in the my search. I threw it, and only one, then two of the others I had, into my usual, faithful search of choice - no result, just like before.

In an idle moment a few days later, I remembered that I hadn't thrown the new word into the other engines, mainly because I didn't expect a result. You could have knocked me over with a feather when one of them came up with the answer, not only about what the organisation was and did, but also why the answer was so rare. Obviously, the info only appeared in a few archives, I'd guess only six or so, and the number of documents concerned was only a dozen, if that many. Less obvious was the format of the documents, which was not plain text, or rather HTML, explaining why all but one search engine failed to even see, let alone find them.

Moral if the story?

If you can't find something, it IS worth trying alternatives, both by words, and by search engine. You might like your favourite, but it might be blind to what you are looking for, so always try more than one if you have a problem.