Re: Fixing Google Search on the docs (redux)

Christophe Pettus <xof(at)thebuild(dot)com> writes:
>> On Nov 18, 2020, at 09:28, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:
>> Their only chance is to search for
>> something else that might hit our docs, then in that click over to the
>> correct version they actually asked for, and then search *again* using
>> our site-search and hope that it shows up there. I'm willing to bet
>> very few users will figure that part out...

> I'm not sure that is a worse situation than searching for something and having the first page be 9.1 hits.

Maybe, rather than trying to force google to index "current", we should
force them to index current minus one or two releases, so that what they
index is in the middle of the range of supported releases. That would
represent a decent compromise between "info too old" and "info too new".

Another idea is to block, via robots.txt, any out-of-support branches.
We won't know which of the supported branches they then prioritize,
but at least it won't be 9.1.

regards, tom lane