WHY WAS I REFERRED TO A DUMMY HTML FILE INSTEAD OF DIRECTLY TO THE PDF DOCUMENT I WANTED TO SEE?

PDF documents are much more expensive to index than HTML files. Atomz.com, the company I pay to run the Search facility on my site, count every single page of a PDF document as a separate file. However, they count a single HTML file, no matter how long or short, as just that: as one single file. If the number of ‘files’ (i.e. HTML files plus pages of PDF documents) exceeds 1000 (which they do), I have to pay a lot more money..

To get round this problem I make dummy HTML versions of many PDF documents included on this site. I put the PDF documents in a folder excluded from indexing and get Atomz.com to index the HTML version instead. I also put a direct link to the correct PDF document at the top of those dummy HTML files.

Thanks to this ruse you can search the website for any words occurring in it and I do not have to pay extra to provide you with that Search service. The only bother for you is that you have to click once more than otherwise, for me that I have to produce two versions of a helluva lot of files.

If you know of another way round this problem, please let me know!