5 ms·
Instructions around the usage of meta robot tags and robots.txt files
- MattGaiser 5y agoAt least they are keeping up with current technical tricks.
- rbinv 5y agoNice. They should probably add HTTP headers (X-Robots-Tag) to the list. Cloaking, too.
- walshemj 5y agoAnd ban the use of PDF's - which is another way this could be avoided. Oh and mandate clean links no funky javascipt links that search crawlers don't follow.
- bawolff 5y agoSearch engines can index pdfs.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoProvided the content is not encrypted.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoI stand corrected: encrypted PDFs are indexed unless a password is set. However, in the past they were unable to do so[0]: "Generally we can index textual content (written in any language) from PDF files that use various kinds of character encodings, provided they're not password protected or encrypted." [0] https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2011/09/pdfs-in-go...
- bawolff 5y agoI think the assumption is that encrypted pdfs would not be used here because users still have to view these documents
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoNo, the PDF standard explicitly allows encryption without the need to set up user password; in this case, the owner password is set. The only change for the user is that the word "Secured" usually appears next to the filename in the reader.
- walshemj 5y agoYeh but they don't work as well and wont be as discoverable
- lmkg 5y agoPer the main project link, the pricing information required to be posted in JSON format with specific schema and file names.
- breischl 5y agoJSON is allowed, but not required. They just required open, non-proprietary, formats. They specifically gave YAML and XML as other examples.
- charrondev 5y agoIf you check the main read me proprietary formats are specifically not allowed, with notable examples of PDF, and excel
- mimsee 5y agoWhy are they banning the methods instead of saying how the pricing should be displayed. E.g. why say you cannot have "noindex" instead of saying "the pricing information needs to be in plain-text, human-readable, accessible, indexable..." and so on.
- dillondoyle 5y agoBetter yet in a database with consistent schema
- toomuchtodo 5y agoWhy not both?
- mimsee 5y agoBecause wouldn't they have to keep adding new techniques to the list continuously when in the other case they can say in what format the content needs to be available in.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pseudalopex 5y agoIndexable is open to interpretation. No disallow directives in robots.txt isn't.
- lmkg 5y agoThey are doing that as well. They are posting general requirements, as well as providing details on specific situations. From the main project @ https://github.com/CMSgov/price-transparency-guide https://github.com/CMSgov/price-transparency-guide Section: Overview > All machine-readable files must [...] made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information. Section: Public Discoverability > These machine-readable files post made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.
- 5y ago
- ninetax 5y agoTypo in headline?
- TuringTest 5y agoNope, they're artistic regulators
- dang 5y agoWe've changed the title from "Regulartors ban hospitals from using “noindex, nofollow” on pricing pages" to what the page says. Submitters: If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- ajarmst 5y agoMy brain initially parsed "meta robot" as "megarobot" and I was really excited until I got to the last part of the sentence.
- cosmotic 5y agoThey should retroactively penalize hospitals for trying to hide this information as it is clearly against the spirit of the law.
- colejohnson66 5y agoThe US Constitution prohibits “ex post facto” laws. You can punish someone for something that wasn’t a crime when they did it.
- cosmotic 5y agoSure. I'm not saying make a new law then punish. I'm saying they should be punished based on the existing law that said prices had to be published. Similar to punishing someone for tax evasion even though the specific technique they used wasn't explicitly enumerated in the law.
- kjrose 5y agoThis will be a fun example of legalism v. Hacker ingenuity. Everytime they figure out a specific legal way to write up a trick to hide prices, the folks will find another loophole to hide them. Honestly. This could be a fun race to the bottom.
- InfiniteRand 5y agoAs I read this, it seems like this is saying that if you are saying that you are posting public pricing information, you should not be hiding that information from search engines. Seems like it's trying to avoid people (I guess it's targeted toward insurers, if I'm reading the main page correctly) saying that they are transparent about prices but hiding the information so no one sees it. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.