Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Would you do some work for more hits? (Would they?!)

Author:Greg The A110 Guy
Posted:12/7/1998; 9:13:34 AM
Topic:Would you do some work for more hits?
Msg #:903 (In response to 857)
Prev/Next:902 / 904

I find the comment from the Excite rep laughable!

Excite's indexing robot happily ignores META tags -- where's the incentive for people to use them? Getting people to use META tags will happen when their search-bots pay attention to them! Paraphrasing Dave, "Respect flows both ways!"

Excite-bots will ONLY use the robots.txt file for excluding pages from their index, NOT the individual pages' META tags (noindex or nofollow, for example), at least according to the messages I have received from Excite staffers, and my own experience. So unless you're running your own server, or can persuade the server admin to tweak the robots.txt (or create one in the first place!), your pages get included in their index, regardless of your META tags. Now that's friendly service....

Excite needs to rethink their policy about this situation. The Web indexing business IS a two-way street, and I heartily support Dave's efforts to make the indexes more valuable. However, if Excite does not respect the things that an *individual* Web content creator can control, how they expect people to properly use things that can ultimately make Excite's job easier?

Greg The A110 Guy

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