Re: Fixing Google Search on the docs (redux)

On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 5:45 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> 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".
>

That'll stop people searching about the new features in the latest, which I
think is likely a common pattern.

>
> 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.
>

That I could get on board with.

--
Dave Page
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Twitter: @pgsnake

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