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As far as I understand it, website owners have to opt out of being indexed by Google (via robots.txt), but they have to opt in to being indexed by Facebook (by

by troymc 16y ago

As far as I understand it, website owners have to opt out of being indexed by Google (via robots.txt), but they have to opt in to being indexed by Facebook (by adding the "Like" button). Or am I reading this wrong? If website owners add the Open Graph Protocol <meta> tags in the <head> of their web pages, then Google (and every other search engine) can see that information as well.

enjo 16y ago
That seems to be the idea. However, that's likely a strength for Facebook really. By creating a self-selecting index they're really removing a lot of cruft right up front. IIRC Google tried something along these lines. You could (maybe still can?) sort of meta moderate search results letting Google know which ones you thought where 'best'. Same thing here, by liking a page you lend relevance to that page. I believe OneRiot also does something like this. They have a widely installed toolbar that is out there collecting information about what users are looking at. It aggregates this information to figure out what is important at this particular moment. In other words, it determines relevance by attention. Facebook would be doing something similar here. The more attention (likes) a page receives, the more relevant it is. I'm not sure if that actually delivers better results, or even meaningful ones at all. It's definitely an interesting move tho.
- martian 16y ago
  For that matter, Google knows probably as much as any entity can ever hope to know about people's browsing behaviors. They track what sites people click from their search results, they'll know if you go back immediately to search, or try a different search, if you're not happy with the results. They have Google Analytics installed on millions of domains and know intimately the behavior of users on those sites. I really fail to see how the simplicity of a binary "like" button on opt-in pages with easily-spammable RDF tags can compete with this.
- moultano 16y ago
  All of the real cruft on the internet wants to be in every search engine it can. The real gems are entirely oblivious to where their traffic comes from / could come from.
sanj 16y ago
The "what" is available to everyone. The "who" is what Facebook controls. Don't undervalue that.

by troymc 16y ago

enjo 16y ago

That seems to be the idea. However, that's likely a strength for Facebook really. By creating a self-selecting index they're really removing a lot of cruft right up front. IIRC Google tried something along these lines. You could (maybe still can?) sort of meta moderate search results letting Google know which ones you thought where 'best'. Same thing here, by liking a page you lend relevance to that page. I believe OneRiot also does something like this. They have a widely installed toolbar that is out there collecting information about what users are looking at. It aggregates this information to figure out what is important at this particular moment. In other words, it determines relevance by attention. Facebook would be doing something similar here. The more attention (likes) a page receives, the more relevant it is. I'm not sure if that actually delivers better results, or even meaningful ones at all. It's definitely an interesting move tho.

martian 16y ago
For that matter, Google knows probably as much as any entity can ever hope to know about people's browsing behaviors. They track what sites people click from their search results, they'll know if you go back immediately to search, or try a different search, if you're not happy with the results. They have Google Analytics installed on millions of domains and know intimately the behavior of users on those sites. I really fail to see how the simplicity of a binary "like" button on opt-in pages with easily-spammable RDF tags can compete with this.
moultano 16y ago
All of the real cruft on the internet wants to be in every search engine it can. The real gems are entirely oblivious to where their traffic comes from / could come from.

sanj 16y ago

The "what" is available to everyone. The "who" is what Facebook controls. Don't undervalue that.