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This is missing the point though. Let's focus on #1 from above; most people who post things online probably want Google to index them and even do SEO tricks to
by ehsankia 5y ago
This is missing the point though. Let's focus on #1 from above; most people who post things online probably want Google to index them and even do SEO tricks to get there. I post stuff about myself on my website because I want people to see it.
The issue comes when I put stuff on my website about someone else, as in your example. I want my content to be on Google, but you want my content off of Google. At that point, there's a conflict and it's not clear to me who should be resolving it and what position Google should take.
The options are:
1. No one gets to be indexed, which will hurt the millions who want people to discover their content
2. Google has to manually decide in every single instance like the one you mention in your post, that seems unrealistic
3. The status quo, which is that Google indexes what's posted publicly.
- macksd 5y agoOr a 4th option: if, as you say, most people are doing SEO tricks to get there, why not just only index stuff that has indexing-specific metadata associated with it. I don't see why this needs to be so different from an opt-in version of robots.txt. IMO this only becomes unclear when you're collecting user content en masse from non-technical users, say in a case like Facebook, etc. And IMO Facebook just shouldn't be passing on user-content from individual consumers to be indexed, especially if they encourage you to upload data that references other people.
- ehsankia 5y agoThat doesn't solve the majority of issues brought up here. Just like it wouldn't solve all the things you mentioned about your colleague posting things you aren't happy about.