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Yes, but doing so, they will lose the ability to be indexed, searched, archived and linked to. Like during the flash era. Which in turn will start a new trend

Yes, but doing so, they will lose the ability to be indexed, searched, archived and linked to. Like during the flash era. Which in turn will start a new trend of website that are "open". It's a cycle.

karatestomp 7y ago
Plenty of sites already give Google something different from what they show everyone else, right?
- Karunamon 7y ago
  I thought that was an offense that would get one either severely de-ranked or delisted from search outright?
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    What do paywalled sites do, then? They don't seem to have a problem ranking just fine.
    - Karunamon 7y ago
      They show the abstract or the same bit of the headline and maybe a paragraph you see when hitting the page. Googlebot doesn't get the full text.
      - karatestomp 7y ago
        I've definitely seen article text on Google that was not presented to me when I clicked the link, and not because the article was updated or something, but because I was blocked from seeing the article.
        Karunamon 7y ago
        It could be in a hidden element or something.. I find that pages that do this fall in the face of things like safari reader mode.
        sli 7y ago
        Many "paywalled" sites lose their paywall if you disable JS.
- jaywalk 7y ago
  No, that's actually a great way to make Google penalize your site. It's explicitly against their Webmaster Guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355
  - slig 7y ago
    Big properties do that and Google doesn't care.
    - krisroadruck 7y ago
      You sure about that? How big qualifies as big in your eyes? Medium implemented homepage cloaking in November of 2019 and within a month they lost 40% of their overall search visibility: https://www.onely.com/blog/medium-lost-half-visibility/ https://www.onely.com/blog/medium-lost-half-visibility/
      - zrobotics 7y ago
        Pinterest? Google is somehow able to crawl images on their site, but I certainly can't view these images without creating an account and logging in. Their site ranks highly enough that I gave up on google image search last year. Additionally, off the top of my head Bloomberg and NYT both won't allow me to view more than a few articles but let the Google crawler index their articles.
        jessaustin 7y ago
        Yes Pinterest is awful. Certain categories of images are totally borked on Google and other search engines because of them.
  - postalrat 7y ago
    Tell that to linkedin, pinterest, and dozens of news sites.
    - 7y ago
Supermancho 7y ago
> they will lose the ability to be indexed, searched, archived and linked to Sounds like an API that will be implemented.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- BiteCode_dev 7y ago
  If it's not standard, it will be useless. If it is, the browser will eventually put it in the users hand.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
three_seagrass 7y ago
Crawler bots are already doing site rendering and OCR. This isn't that big of a step for them.
- brnt 7y ago
  TIL. Wow. I guess I missed the web is not HTML anymore.

karatestomp 7y ago

Plenty of sites already give Google something different from what they show everyone else, right?

Karunamon 7y ago
I thought that was an offense that would get one either severely de-ranked or delisted from search outright?
- karatestomp 7y ago
  What do paywalled sites do, then? They don't seem to have a problem ranking just fine.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    They show the abstract or the same bit of the headline and maybe a paragraph you see when hitting the page. Googlebot doesn't get the full text.
    - karatestomp 7y ago
      I've definitely seen article text on Google that was not presented to me when I clicked the link, and not because the article was updated or something, but because I was blocked from seeing the article.
      - Karunamon 7y ago
        It could be in a hidden element or something.. I find that pages that do this fall in the face of things like safari reader mode.
      - sli 7y ago
        Many "paywalled" sites lose their paywall if you disable JS.
jaywalk 7y ago
No, that's actually a great way to make Google penalize your site. It's explicitly against their Webmaster Guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355
- slig 7y ago
  Big properties do that and Google doesn't care.
  - krisroadruck 7y ago
    You sure about that? How big qualifies as big in your eyes? Medium implemented homepage cloaking in November of 2019 and within a month they lost 40% of their overall search visibility: https://www.onely.com/blog/medium-lost-half-visibility/ https://www.onely.com/blog/medium-lost-half-visibility/
    - zrobotics 7y ago
      Pinterest? Google is somehow able to crawl images on their site, but I certainly can't view these images without creating an account and logging in. Their site ranks highly enough that I gave up on google image search last year. Additionally, off the top of my head Bloomberg and NYT both won't allow me to view more than a few articles but let the Google crawler index their articles.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Yes Pinterest is awful. Certain categories of images are totally borked on Google and other search engines because of them.
- postalrat 7y ago
  Tell that to linkedin, pinterest, and dozens of news sites.
  - 7y ago

Supermancho 7y ago

> they will lose the ability to be indexed, searched, archived and linked to Sounds like an API that will be implemented.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
BiteCode_dev 7y ago
If it's not standard, it will be useless. If it is, the browser will eventually put it in the users hand.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

three_seagrass 7y ago

Crawler bots are already doing site rendering and OCR. This isn't that big of a step for them.

brnt 7y ago
TIL. Wow. I guess I missed the web is not HTML anymore.