4 ms·

Doesn't that indicate that Google doesn't respect robots.txt then?

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Robots stops a page from being crawled the noindex tag stops it getting into the index. Google is also slow to honour 404 and drop pages which can hang around for ages, Bing is much faster to remove 404 pages.
- rafaelm 7y ago
  Usually, creating "410 Gone"[0] response for the URL and running the URL through the URL Inspection Tool [1] can help make things a bit faster. But yeah, it does take a while to get these 404s removed. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410 [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en
  - inlined 7y ago
    That distinction exists in many systems. E.g. for cloud events, 404 is considered with skepticism because it could be a race condition in provisioning or transient issue whereas 410 requires data streams to be cut off.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Then you should serve 503
      - inlined 7y ago
        5xx means that the server made a mistake. 4xx means that the caller made a mistake. Sending a request to a GONE url is canonically classified as a “user” or sender error.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
No, disallow means that you are not allowed to crawl the page. You have to crawl the page to no you cannot index it. But how do you index it if you do not crawl the page, well if another page that you can crawl and index points to the page you cannot index as authoritative on a keyword then it be in the index with that keyword, even if you do not have the actual crawled content of the page.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  It really feels like they need to allow a list of `noindex` pages in the robots.txt then...
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    The whole point is they don’t want you to easily opt out of it.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Keep walking down that path to find v. heavy regulation.
      - wayoutthere 7y ago
        Not if you buy the government first. I think they’re already a victim of their own greed though. It’s bad enough I started using DDG for search because the results are now more relevant. Google’s advertising algorithms are designed to subtly nudge sites into paying for placement — which means there’s a “non-content” element to the search results that makes it into the user experience. I feel like there was a tipping point a year or two ago where the results just stopped being useful — The best analogy I can find is how search engines used to be in the days before AltaVista. Then AltaVista came out and the results were far more relevant (if not perfect). Google -> DDG feels like that in 2019. That “non-content” element will only grow over time as Google seeks revenue growth — growth across all of Google’s non-advertising revenue streams combined are not enough to move the needle compared to the scale their ad business has — of which search ads are by far the most profitable. So they will further try to monetize search; it’s their cash cow but I think a small player like DDG could easily overtake them as the quality of Google’s search results (to the end user) continue to decline.

Robots stops a page from being crawled the noindex tag stops it getting into the index. Google is also slow to honour 404 and drop pages which can hang around for ages, Bing is much faster to remove 404 pages.

rafaelm 7y ago
Usually, creating "410 Gone"[0] response for the URL and running the URL through the URL Inspection Tool [1] can help make things a bit faster. But yeah, it does take a while to get these 404s removed. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410 [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en
- inlined 7y ago
  That distinction exists in many systems. E.g. for cloud events, 404 is considered with skepticism because it could be a race condition in provisioning or transient issue whereas 410 requires data streams to be cut off.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Then you should serve 503
    - inlined 7y ago
      5xx means that the server made a mistake. 4xx means that the caller made a mistake. Sending a request to a GONE url is canonically classified as a “user” or sender error.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

No, disallow means that you are not allowed to crawl the page. You have to crawl the page to no you cannot index it. But how do you index it if you do not crawl the page, well if another page that you can crawl and index points to the page you cannot index as authoritative on a keyword then it be in the index with that keyword, even if you do not have the actual crawled content of the page.

henryfjordan 7y ago
It really feels like they need to allow a list of `noindex` pages in the robots.txt then...
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  The whole point is they don’t want you to easily opt out of it.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Keep walking down that path to find v. heavy regulation.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      Not if you buy the government first. I think they’re already a victim of their own greed though. It’s bad enough I started using DDG for search because the results are now more relevant. Google’s advertising algorithms are designed to subtly nudge sites into paying for placement — which means there’s a “non-content” element to the search results that makes it into the user experience. I feel like there was a tipping point a year or two ago where the results just stopped being useful — The best analogy I can find is how search engines used to be in the days before AltaVista. Then AltaVista came out and the results were far more relevant (if not perfect). Google -> DDG feels like that in 2019. That “non-content” element will only grow over time as Google seeks revenue growth — growth across all of Google’s non-advertising revenue streams combined are not enough to move the needle compared to the scale their ad business has — of which search ads are by far the most profitable. So they will further try to monetize search; it’s their cash cow but I think a small player like DDG could easily overtake them as the quality of Google’s search results (to the end user) continue to decline.