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I've only been on this site for a week, but I've noticed that an awful lot of questions that should go to ELL go to ELU. I also notice when I google: "English stack exchange" that the first hit I get is ELU.

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Beneath the ELU heading a number of subcategories are then listed; English Language Learner;questions; ask a question; word usage; single word requests and a couple of others.

My point is if I were learning the English language and had a question, my instinctive response would be to click 'questions' rather than ELL. But then I land at ELU, which isn't necessarily appropriate. I'm not a techie, but wonder is there some way to fix it so that ELL is not listed in the top google hit as a subcategory on the same level as questions (which are ELU questions).

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    It’s because “english” is in the url that ELU ranks higher. There was a suggestion to change this but it never gained enough support or something
    – Laurel Mod
    Jul 30, 2018 at 19:40
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    Relevant at ELL.Meta: Should we change the URL of ELL to something more descriptive?; SE staff flat-out say "Far as the actual URL of ELL goes, though, we won't be making any changes."
    – choster
    Jul 30, 2018 at 21:13
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    Woud it be technologically possible and if so woud it be an improvement if each user before posing a question saw a pop up that said something like: Stop and consider! Is your question more suitable for ELL? The user then gets Yes/No answers, Yes automatically linking to ELL, No staying at ELU and allowing the user to continue. Is that unrealistic technogicaly or perhaps undersirable for some reason I haven't yet considered?
    – S Conroy
    Aug 7, 2018 at 22:52
  • A screenshot (and maybe a link for an example search) would be really helpful here.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Aug 9, 2018 at 23:22
  • So why do we think “English stack exchange” is the search term the “troublesome” questions come from? If I look at ELL's analytics most of the hits don’t have the search results set, but of the ones that do, most of them are questions about English, like “at the park or in the park”. Granted the analytics on the dashboard don’t seem that thorough, but how do we know this one search result even matters? Most of the folks that need help asking (in my experience) don’t know what SE is when they land here, so they probably didn’t search for it.
    – ColleenV
    Aug 16, 2018 at 21:16

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