5 ms·

I disagree. There is an implicit contract between website publishers and search engines that it’s ok to do this. The website can set nosnippet in robots if they

by gniv 7y ago

I disagree. There is an implicit contract between website publishers and search engines that it’s ok to do this. The website can set nosnippet in robots if they want to not have the snippet in search results.

milesskorpen 7y ago
It's a faustian bargin. Google is so powerful you can't do without them, but they're also inexorably eating your future.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Google is so powerful you can't do without them I wonder how true that assumption really is any more. The quality of traffic Google drives to sites I operate is very low compared to all other major sources, with much less engagement by any metric you like, notably including conversions. The only reliable exception is when we're running marketing campaigns in other places, which often result in spikes in both direct visitors landing on our homepage and search engine visitors arriving at our general landing pages. There is this conventional wisdom that SEO, and in particular playing by Google's rules to rank highly in its results pages, is the only way you can run a viable commercial site these days. Our experience has been exactly the opposite: our SEO is actually quite effective, in that we do rank very highly for many relevant search terms, but it makes a relatively small contribution to anything that matters. And really, when I write "SEO" here, I'm only talking about general good practices like being fast, having a good information architecture and working well on different devices. We don't change the structure of our pages just because Google's latest blog post says X or Y is now considered a "best practice" or anything like that. Of course I have no way to know how representative our experience is. YMMV.
  - milesskorpen 7y ago
    It is a very significant part of our business.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Yes you can. There are other ways to market yourself and your website. For instance, the author of “Fearless Negotiation” has appeared in four or five podcasts I follow. The well known pundits in the Apple ecosystem grew an audience organically through word of mouth. Hoping to stand out on Google results as a business plan is recipe for failure. You are one algorithm change from going out of business.
cyrusshepard 7y ago
It's a devil's bargain. If you opt-out of snippets, it simply means somebody else claims the top spot, and you are left with even less traffic (by a significant amount)
- gniv 7y ago
  > If you opt-out of snippets, it simply means somebody else claims the top spot Citation? I thought snippets are just for display, not ranking.
  - ribeyes 7y ago
    Snippets link to the source URL, so getting into the snippet gets your link to top of the page.
zymhan 7y ago
So by having a website, I implicitly agree to Google's search practices? That doesn't seem right.
- njharman 7y ago
  You put a resource on an open network and don't use any of the standard, recognized methods to indicate don't index, don't share, (nor lock it away with auth). It's like if you put a sculpture in front yard and get upset when someone points it out in their neighborhood tour company, even worse cause yard ornaments don't have standard accepted methods of saying "don't use". Two choices 1) use robots.txt 2) don't put it on the internet
  - eitland 7y ago
    Nah. Take it easy here, there is a long way between indexing and showing the most relevant hit and outright lifting big parts out of the site and use them on their own property: It is more like if the guide that used to send visitors to your property has set up their own boot on the best spot on the sidewalk next to you and are raking in money because of the useless (often, in the last few years) ads they have plastered all over it. Even if it is an educational non-profit resource you don't want that as some of the details get lost when visitors only reads the guides summary instead of taking a closer look for themselves. And according to people on this thread they will also complain and/or come with suggestions about how you can make it even more useful to them.
    - didibus 7y ago
      I think of it more as if you put a banner with content somewhere in the public, and I take a photo of it, what can I later do with that photo? And for that, it's a question of copyright. It turns out, in the US, if something is publicly available it does not make the copyright a part of the public domain. Thus the original author still retains copyright unless explicitly stated otherwise. There is an exception to this though, which is called fair use. And for that, I'd recommend reading this: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/411058/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/411058/ Book snippets by Google searched were deemed fair use. So the question remains, would website snippet similarly count as fair use? What will the federal courts rule be? And when it comes to fair use, that's the only way to know if it is or not.
dessant 7y ago
You don't have to inform anyone about your content not being redistributable, that is not how copyright works.
vageli 7y ago
> I disagree. There is an implicit contract between website publishers and search engines that it’s ok to do this. The website can set nosnippet in robots if they want to not have the snippet in search results. Who made this contract? I never signed one. If I came to your place of business and copied your content and provided it somewhere else, I would be infringing your copyright. Do I have to put up signs specifying that at my place of business? Why is this any different? My web content is not the property of someone else and by publishing my information that is in no way an implicit grant of the right to reproduce it.
- gniv 7y ago
  I believe citing small pieces from a large text is covered by fair use.
  - mthoms 7y ago
    It depends. One of the criteria for acceptable "fair use" is that the usage shouldn't negatively affect demand for the original source. Although there are other criteria to consider, Google's snippets clearly violate that particular tenet. See #4 https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
wolco 7y ago
It should be opt-in.
buboard 7y ago
> nosnippet TIL. That's actually a good idea. Does that eliminate all kinds of snippets? NOARCHIVE may also be of use.
buboard 7y ago
> There is an implicit contract Then why can't publishers scrape google?
- mkl 7y ago
  From http://www.google.com/robots.txt http://www.google.com/robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /search ...

by gniv 7y ago

milesskorpen 7y ago

It's a faustian bargin. Google is so powerful you can't do without them, but they're also inexorably eating your future.

Silhouette 7y ago
Google is so powerful you can't do without them I wonder how true that assumption really is any more. The quality of traffic Google drives to sites I operate is very low compared to all other major sources, with much less engagement by any metric you like, notably including conversions. The only reliable exception is when we're running marketing campaigns in other places, which often result in spikes in both direct visitors landing on our homepage and search engine visitors arriving at our general landing pages. There is this conventional wisdom that SEO, and in particular playing by Google's rules to rank highly in its results pages, is the only way you can run a viable commercial site these days. Our experience has been exactly the opposite: our SEO is actually quite effective, in that we do rank very highly for many relevant search terms, but it makes a relatively small contribution to anything that matters. And really, when I write "SEO" here, I'm only talking about general good practices like being fast, having a good information architecture and working well on different devices. We don't change the structure of our pages just because Google's latest blog post says X or Y is now considered a "best practice" or anything like that. Of course I have no way to know how representative our experience is. YMMV.
- milesskorpen 7y ago
  It is a very significant part of our business.
scarface74 7y ago
Yes you can. There are other ways to market yourself and your website. For instance, the author of “Fearless Negotiation” has appeared in four or five podcasts I follow. The well known pundits in the Apple ecosystem grew an audience organically through word of mouth. Hoping to stand out on Google results as a business plan is recipe for failure. You are one algorithm change from going out of business.

cyrusshepard 7y ago

It's a devil's bargain. If you opt-out of snippets, it simply means somebody else claims the top spot, and you are left with even less traffic (by a significant amount)

gniv 7y ago
> If you opt-out of snippets, it simply means somebody else claims the top spot Citation? I thought snippets are just for display, not ranking.
- ribeyes 7y ago
  Snippets link to the source URL, so getting into the snippet gets your link to top of the page.

zymhan 7y ago

So by having a website, I implicitly agree to Google's search practices? That doesn't seem right.

njharman 7y ago
You put a resource on an open network and don't use any of the standard, recognized methods to indicate don't index, don't share, (nor lock it away with auth). It's like if you put a sculpture in front yard and get upset when someone points it out in their neighborhood tour company, even worse cause yard ornaments don't have standard accepted methods of saying "don't use". Two choices 1) use robots.txt 2) don't put it on the internet
- eitland 7y ago
  Nah. Take it easy here, there is a long way between indexing and showing the most relevant hit and outright lifting big parts out of the site and use them on their own property: It is more like if the guide that used to send visitors to your property has set up their own boot on the best spot on the sidewalk next to you and are raking in money because of the useless (often, in the last few years) ads they have plastered all over it. Even if it is an educational non-profit resource you don't want that as some of the details get lost when visitors only reads the guides summary instead of taking a closer look for themselves. And according to people on this thread they will also complain and/or come with suggestions about how you can make it even more useful to them.
  - didibus 7y ago
    I think of it more as if you put a banner with content somewhere in the public, and I take a photo of it, what can I later do with that photo? And for that, it's a question of copyright. It turns out, in the US, if something is publicly available it does not make the copyright a part of the public domain. Thus the original author still retains copyright unless explicitly stated otherwise. There is an exception to this though, which is called fair use. And for that, I'd recommend reading this: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/411058/ https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/411058/ Book snippets by Google searched were deemed fair use. So the question remains, would website snippet similarly count as fair use? What will the federal courts rule be? And when it comes to fair use, that's the only way to know if it is or not.

dessant 7y ago

You don't have to inform anyone about your content not being redistributable, that is not how copyright works.

vageli 7y ago

> I disagree. There is an implicit contract between website publishers and search engines that it’s ok to do this. The website can set nosnippet in robots if they want to not have the snippet in search results. Who made this contract? I never signed one. If I came to your place of business and copied your content and provided it somewhere else, I would be infringing your copyright. Do I have to put up signs specifying that at my place of business? Why is this any different? My web content is not the property of someone else and by publishing my information that is in no way an implicit grant of the right to reproduce it.

gniv 7y ago
I believe citing small pieces from a large text is covered by fair use.
- mthoms 7y ago
  It depends. One of the criteria for acceptable "fair use" is that the usage shouldn't negatively affect demand for the original source. Although there are other criteria to consider, Google's snippets clearly violate that particular tenet. See #4 https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

wolco 7y ago

It should be opt-in.

buboard 7y ago

> nosnippet TIL. That's actually a good idea. Does that eliminate all kinds of snippets? NOARCHIVE may also be of use.

buboard 7y ago

> There is an implicit contract Then why can't publishers scrape google?

mkl 7y ago
From http://www.google.com/robots.txt http://www.google.com/robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /search ...