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Have you looked closely at Yahoo's new "robots-nocontent" tag? The tag was born from discussions at a recent Robots.txt Summit in which one topic focus included the adding of support for web pages to identify main content non-relevancy.
So what is considered non-relevant to the main content? Priyank Garg of Yahoo!Search summarizes it as navigation, menus repeated across the entire site, boilerplate text, or even adverting. So, basicly everything outside of your main content area is non-relevant.
Maybe I am not getting this. Wouldn't it just be simpler to identify what is the main content? Since it is apparent that Slurp cannot distinguish repetitive tendencies across the pages of one domain, then let's spell it out for them with a class="robots-this-is-content-dummie".
It would be a lot simpler to implement also. Just wrap your content with DIV element and you are done. You might have a section on the sidebar for "related" reference purposes, then wrap one around that too.
The usage of the class attribute is all wrong anyway. This is more of a relation than a class, more aptly it is meta-information which can aid the robots in distinguishing relevant content passages from the fluff.
To date, we have two methods of conveying information to robots on what not to index -- the robots.txt file and the meta noindex in the head section of our pages. Why not their own tag element for meta information inside the body of the page?
My suggestion is to use a new tag -- <robot attr></robot>. Inserting an element in your page that the browser does not recognize, will not be displayed to the viewer. For all intents and purposes, it is invisible except to the spiders.
The new robot tag could have an attribute of their own choosing. For instance, the Yahoo attribute would simply be slurp="directive", Google would be googlebot="directive", etc. Directives could be "content", "content-related" and (ugggh) "no-content" -- but there would not be a need for the latter, now would there?
Another possibility is to keep in line with the other methods of communication -- attributes of Index and Follow could be used. The attribute of Rel (relation) could be used also in the form of "main", "related", or "plagiarized". I made that last one up to see if you were awake or not. But when you think about it -- quotations or full passages lifted from other sites should not qualify as content.
There is a need to have this form of control at our disposal. The method that is used needs to be thought out a little better. Yahoo's premature birth of their new baby was not even close, it was slipshod and messy.
Technorati Tags: yahoo, slurp, robots-nocontent, robots, nocontent, robots.txt
So what is considered non-relevant to the main content? Priyank Garg of Yahoo!Search summarizes it as navigation, menus repeated across the entire site, boilerplate text, or even adverting. So, basicly everything outside of your main content area is non-relevant.
This tag is really about our crawler focusing on the main content of your page and targeting the right pages on your site for specific search queries.Actually the term "tag" is a misnomer. Yahoo's proposal is that you implement this with a class attribute (ie: class="robots-nocontent") for any content that is extraneous to the main unique content of the page. The Slurp help page cites numerous examples of how to apply this class to your Html -- too numerous.
Maybe I am not getting this. Wouldn't it just be simpler to identify what is the main content? Since it is apparent that Slurp cannot distinguish repetitive tendencies across the pages of one domain, then let's spell it out for them with a class="robots-this-is-content-dummie".
It would be a lot simpler to implement also. Just wrap your content with DIV element and you are done. You might have a section on the sidebar for "related" reference purposes, then wrap one around that too.
Give them their own tag <robots>
The usage of the class attribute is all wrong anyway. This is more of a relation than a class, more aptly it is meta-information which can aid the robots in distinguishing relevant content passages from the fluff.
To date, we have two methods of conveying information to robots on what not to index -- the robots.txt file and the meta noindex in the head section of our pages. Why not their own tag element for meta information inside the body of the page?
My suggestion is to use a new tag -- <robot attr></robot>. Inserting an element in your page that the browser does not recognize, will not be displayed to the viewer. For all intents and purposes, it is invisible except to the spiders.
The new robot tag could have an attribute of their own choosing. For instance, the Yahoo attribute would simply be slurp="directive", Google would be googlebot="directive", etc. Directives could be "content", "content-related" and (ugggh) "no-content" -- but there would not be a need for the latter, now would there?
Another possibility is to keep in line with the other methods of communication -- attributes of Index and Follow could be used. The attribute of Rel (relation) could be used also in the form of "main", "related", or "plagiarized". I made that last one up to see if you were awake or not. But when you think about it -- quotations or full passages lifted from other sites should not qualify as content.
There is a need to have this form of control at our disposal. The method that is used needs to be thought out a little better. Yahoo's premature birth of their new baby was not even close, it was slipshod and messy.
Technorati Tags: yahoo, slurp, robots-nocontent, robots, nocontent, robots.txt
Labels: nocontent, robots, robots-nocontent, robots.txt, slurp, yahoo
Here we go again, shades of Nigritude Ultramarine. If you all remember the SEO contest from the past, which is probably one of the major reasons for the adoption of the Nofollow microformat -- it looks like there is another one on the horizon. Actually it is coming from another horizon, Indonesia, and it is called Ngadutrafik 2007 and there close to 95,000 results in Google right now.
I just spotted it in the Technorati WTF not more than a few minutes ago, and it is hitting the Hot List. Preliminary checking shows others are setting up profiles there, and looking at the SERPS a number of blogs are being set up as I speak.
There is also an entry in the Wikipedia announcing the contest, which started last April.
One blogger with a hosted WP.com account has been suspended by Matt. Evidently a gal named Nenda ratted him out, citing abuse of the service. The controversy between the two and the aid of another blogger calling attention to it, did not hurt Nenda in the least -- her blog took a steep hike in visitors during that period
What gets me, is if these people are SEO's -- don't they know about Nofollow? Or will Nofollow really matter. They are hitting Technorati, which is nofollow. Some of the blogs they are setting up, they are actually commenting in. All of which have nofollow links. At any rate, this contest may just show us how effective (or ineffective) it is for combatting spam and whether it will curtail it or not. This will be a great opportunity to see them all out in the open like this.
In the meantime, I suggest you keep an eye on your commenting areas, forums too. It may be time to batten down the hatches before the main force blows ashore.
I just spotted it in the Technorati WTF not more than a few minutes ago, and it is hitting the Hot List. Preliminary checking shows others are setting up profiles there, and looking at the SERPS a number of blogs are being set up as I speak.
There is also an entry in the Wikipedia announcing the contest, which started last April.
Ngadutrafik 2007
* Dates: 22 April 2007 – 30 July 2007
* Keyword: "Ngadutrafik 2007"
* Sponsor: www.masterseo.web.id
* Target Ending:Ngadutrafik 2007 is the topic of an SEO contest held by Adsense-Id Forum members. Ngadutrafik 2007 is a non-prized activity that challenges the members and Indonesia SEO professionals and amateurs to rank themselves among the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN using certain keyword(s)
* SEO Ngadutrafik 2007 Championship SEO professionals and amateurs to rank themselves among the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN using certain keyword(s).
One blogger with a hosted WP.com account has been suspended by Matt. Evidently a gal named Nenda ratted him out, citing abuse of the service. The controversy between the two and the aid of another blogger calling attention to it, did not hurt Nenda in the least -- her blog took a steep hike in visitors during that period
What gets me, is if these people are SEO's -- don't they know about Nofollow? Or will Nofollow really matter. They are hitting Technorati, which is nofollow. Some of the blogs they are setting up, they are actually commenting in. All of which have nofollow links. At any rate, this contest may just show us how effective (or ineffective) it is for combatting spam and whether it will curtail it or not. This will be a great opportunity to see them all out in the open like this.
In the meantime, I suggest you keep an eye on your commenting areas, forums too. It may be time to batten down the hatches before the main force blows ashore.
Labels: blogging, google, microsoft, nofollow, seo, spam, technorati, wordpress, yahoo
I disappear from the Web for a couple of years and come back to this Nofollow thing from Tom Christensen.
I am going to have to agree with Tom on this. It is really stupid.
Also, the whole Wikipedia decision to add Nofollow to outbound links is stupid. And Andy Beal's campaign to Nofollow Wikipedia is stupid, even though it looks like he is Following their lead when it comes to trackbacks and comment links. Not quite calling the kettle black, but close to a very dark grey.
Carsten Cumbrowski opines:
Well isn't that special! Keywords here are "other targets" (eg: You, Me and Dupree). And just how will those other targets eventually go away?
And why is it a completely different story? It is the story. Wikipedia effectively kicked the spammers out of their yard and they are coming to a neighborhood near you. Is it just me, but how does this combat spam?
When Google first suggested Nofollow back in 2005, it didn't take long for a spec to be drafted up by Technorati. MSNSearch and Yahoo!Search jumped quickly on board supposedly, along with scores of blog software developers and proponents.
The spec abstract has nothing to do with not following a link, just applying no weight to the link itself:
When the big three of search come out and say "they will respect Nofollow", what does that mean really? After reading dozens of comments to this regard, I am under the impression that spiders can and will follow the links if they so choose ... they just will not apply any weight to the link. A link is a still a link then.
Should we burn down an entire village of Wikipedia huts just to eradicate a plague, only to have that plague show up in somebody elses village? Where does it stop? I think with all the Doctors and Chemists at Google General, they can come up with a better cure than this.
My hat goes off to Slashdot who use heuristics, karma and other factors in combination with nofollow to combat spam. Also, to Blogoscoped for their "fading nofollow" policy. And to other like minded bloggers who are just saying NO to NoFollow.
This is the kind of responsible forward thinking that we need to be doing, not to mention doing the SE's job for them to boot. It seems to me that any SE should have the ability to differentiate between a blog post and a comment and not apply too much weight to the comment anyway. Why should we have to tell them this?
"... a lot of SEO types were posting about nofollow again. The new twist is they’re trying all sorts of plugins and gadgets to selectively pass or bar following links from their blogs for PR.
People, this is getting really old. And really stupid. Just turn the damn thing off already."
I am going to have to agree with Tom on this. It is really stupid.
Also, the whole Wikipedia decision to add Nofollow to outbound links is stupid. And Andy Beal's campaign to Nofollow Wikipedia is stupid, even though it looks like he is Following their lead when it comes to trackbacks and comment links. Not quite calling the kettle black, but close to a very dark grey.
Carsten Cumbrowski opines:
The hope is that the return for spamming Wikipedia will be so low that it does not even make any sense for those spammers that don’t need much return to be happy.
You can live perfectly fine in India for $1 a day for example. If Spamming Wikipedia reduces that down to $0.25, the spammer will probably look for other targets. And those other targets will also go away eventually, but that is a complete different story.
Well isn't that special! Keywords here are "other targets" (eg: You, Me and Dupree). And just how will those other targets eventually go away?
And why is it a completely different story? It is the story. Wikipedia effectively kicked the spammers out of their yard and they are coming to a neighborhood near you. Is it just me, but how does this combat spam?
Its okay to follow NoFollow. Follow?
When Google first suggested Nofollow back in 2005, it didn't take long for a spec to be drafted up by Technorati. MSNSearch and Yahoo!Search jumped quickly on board supposedly, along with scores of blog software developers and proponents.
The spec abstract has nothing to do with not following a link, just applying no weight to the link itself:
By adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink, a page indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines). Typical use cases include links created by 3rd party commenters on blogs, or links the author wishes to point to, but avoid endorsing.
When the big three of search come out and say "they will respect Nofollow", what does that mean really? After reading dozens of comments to this regard, I am under the impression that spiders can and will follow the links if they so choose ... they just will not apply any weight to the link. A link is a still a link then.
Is SPAM the cholera epedemic of the Internet?
Should we burn down an entire village of Wikipedia huts just to eradicate a plague, only to have that plague show up in somebody elses village? Where does it stop? I think with all the Doctors and Chemists at Google General, they can come up with a better cure than this.
My hat goes off to Slashdot who use heuristics, karma and other factors in combination with nofollow to combat spam. Also, to Blogoscoped for their "fading nofollow" policy. And to other like minded bloggers who are just saying NO to NoFollow.
This is the kind of responsible forward thinking that we need to be doing, not to mention doing the SE's job for them to boot. It seems to me that any SE should have the ability to differentiate between a blog post and a comment and not apply too much weight to the comment anyway. Why should we have to tell them this?
Labels: blogging, google, microsoft, nofollow, spam, yahoo