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Any site can control indexing through robots.txt. You either want this information in the search engine or you don't. Don't like one of the indexers? Tell it
by alex_young 6y ago
Any site can control indexing through robots.txt.
You either want this information in the search engine or you don't.
Don't like one of the indexers? Tell it not to index you.
- Angostura 6y agoHow about if you want the information in a search engine, but you would prefer that the "search engine" didn't just nick the contents and display it on their site, rather than sending searchers to yours?
- alex_young 6y agoIsn't this what a search engine is? Google takes the excerpt which is relevant to your query, displays it to you, along with a link to the resource. Are we upset that the excerpt is too good? That the link isn't prominent enough? Something else?
- jeromegv 6y agoI’m not sure if you’re being dense on purpose. They are not just excerpt. They are taking full on paragraph of content. We aren’t talking of the meta description here. It’s taking so much content that you don’t need to click anymore. Google is now the encyclopedia, with content they did not create.
- httpsterio 6y agoGoogle should help the users choose whether to visit the site in question or not, but not flat-out remove the need as everything is directly presented in Google. Often the sentences Google shows in the card excerpts are lacking in context, but you wouldn't know without visiting the site. This would be comparable to write a scientific paper and only reading the headlines of each source you're using
- tikititaki 6y agoIn a sense, yes, the engine is too good. If you continue this trend, eventually nobody will have a reason to leave Google because anytime you search for anything Google will have the answer to everything. Sure, it's convenient but it's also a bit frightening for one company to have that much power and I think that's what people are a little hesitant about.
- dragonwriter 6y agoThen allow it only to search engines where you have an agreement, or at least they have provided a public commitment, as to how they will present information that aligns with your preferences. You don't have to use “User-agent: *” for your rules.
- occamrazor 6y agoYo can tell google (and any other respectable search engine) not to include snippetsin results, either via robots.txt or with meta elements.
- ComputerGuru 6y agoHow? Edit: thanks. I see Google makes it really hard to opt out of featured snippet while retaining regular search result snippet support.
- anamexis 6y agoI didn't see anything about the robots.txt approach, but this support page discusses the meta tag method. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en
- andylei 6y agohttps://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag#directives_1 https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_t...
- pc86 6y agoInteresting username given the question.
- hyperdimension 6y agoWhy don't you try being a little kinder, especially when you don't have all the facts? It's not as though web design like knowledge of meta tags and robots.txt is the sum total of everything to know about computers. Maybe they've built their own 8-bitter, or are a motherboard PCB designer? I'd argue that'd put them firmly in the 'computer guru' class. But we don't know, so it's probably better to say nothing at all.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
- nostromo 6y agoThis is a great argument when the company in question isn't a monopoly.