Re: Canonical url for latest document set?

Hi Magnus,

Agreed - maybe canonical isn't the best way to fix it.

It would be nice in general if:
- "postgres select syntax" could take you to the default current version of
the documentation
- 'postrgres 9.4 select syntax" could take you to the specified alternative
version

This will take an expert on SEO, but from what I see on the MySql website
(which achieves the above):
- Root link into the current documentation set is much more prominent than
the alternate versions
- Page title has <product - version number> as a single phrase
- There is a 302 redirect when following the unversioned link from google
- h1 and h2 tags are not used on their documentation pages

All that is just observation on my part, so I hope there is someone that
can advise more conclusively.

Cheers,

Conor

On Fri, Jul 14, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 11:04 PM, Conor McNally <theconor(at)gmail(dot)com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> There was a suggestion a few years ago on this forum about adding a
>> canonical url to the documentation set:
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/04E4F5A6-6526-4DDC-A9E
>> 5-2991E3B2ED83%40cantoute.com
>>
>> Was there a reason for not doing this? At the moment it can be pretty
>> annoying googling something like "postgres select syntax", and getting a
>> pretty random selection of duplicate pages, none of which matches the
>> current version of Postgres. Even google for "postgres 9.6 select syntax"
>> still doesn't return the correct version for me.
>>
>
> Yes, and the reason being that the docs aren't actually duplicates.
>
> Something like "postgres 9.6 select syntax" *should* work. But more
> importantly, if we make it the canonical URL, then it will be impossible to
> search for old versions at all, will it not?
>
>
>
> In contrast, other documentation sites such as MySql, CouchDb, Python,
>> Django, etc. all behave much better in search engine results. For CouchDb
>> and Django you can see use of the canonical tag on the documentation
>> pages. For the others they must be doing something different, but still
>> they've managed to direct Google to the single, current version of the
>> correct page.
>>
>
> Yeah, I'm a frequent user of the django docs at least, and it's absolutely
> horrible. Since I'm not using the very latest version, then *every* time I
> search for docs I get sent to the wrong version. So I've got basically 100%
> failure rate with the django docs, vs maybe a 50-60% failure rate with the
> postgres docs.
>
>
>
>> I'm just wondering if something has looked into this already, or if
>> canonical url is something that could be tested for the postgres
>> documentation?
>>
>
> The problem with testing it is that I assume its' destructive testing.
> Once we've tested it, it's very hard to go back.
>
>
>
>> Here is some information from google:
>> https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
>>
>> The goal for me would be to make the documentation for the current
>> version of Postgres rise to the top of search engine results, and to remove
>> the random results for older versions.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>
> If we can find an actual statement from somebody who *knows* (and nto just
> speculates like most of us do) how it works.. In particular, will a search
> for older versions still work or will that force *everybody* to the current
> version?
>
> Things do seem to get worse by the day. I guess we're eventually
> approaching the point where all version specific queries *already* fail.
> We're not there yet, but we seem to be closer than we've ever been before..
>
> --
> Magnus Hagander
> Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
> Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>
>