3 ms·

I'm just guessing here but one of the reasons might be to prevent ranking high in search engine results. Search engines bring in lots of misguided traffic and l

by jcfrei 13y ago

I'm just guessing here but one of the reasons might be to prevent ranking high in search engine results. Search engines bring in lots of misguided traffic and lots of users which don't fit into the HN community. Again I'm just guessing...

mantrax4 13y ago
There's something really wrong with that statement, but I can't describe in words what.
- sjtrny 13y ago
  Elitism?
  - 001sky 13y ago
    is it really that or just avoiding social media marketers? I don't know but it doesn't seem so clear cut. Maybe someone can chime in on that angle.
duncans 13y ago
#shit_HN_says
- tptacek 13y ago
  No, as fun as I'm sure that glib comment was to write, he's not making that up. HN does keep a low Google footprint. I don't know how much it has to do with keeping the community small, but I appreciate that comments I write here don't immediately get nailed to the front of a Google SERP. Here's Paul Graham, briefly, on the subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5808982#up_5808990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5808982#up_5808990
  - jcfrei 13y ago
    thanks for providing the link. couldn't find it myself, but this was the statement I had in the back of my mind.
sergiotapia 13y ago
Can't you just not allow in robots.txt? All mejor search engines respect that.