Subject: Getting better Google search results

From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:20:12 -0000

I had an idea while discussing the limitations of our searching
on irc with a few folks. As far as Google putting old 7.x and
6.x documentation results up, why not create a new subdomain
such as oldocs.postgres.org and stick anything older than a
version of two there. We could still link to it, and leave some
redirects in place for old links, but the new subdomain would
ensure that they would have relatively *low* Google results
compared to the more recent docs, which is what we want.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
End Point Corporation
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200608290016
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

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From: "Magnus Hagander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:56:50 +0200

Wouldn't this be better on -www? :-P

> I had an idea while discussing the limitations of our searching on
> irc with a few folks. As far as Google putting old 7.x and 6.x
> documentation results up, why not create a new subdomain such as
> oldocs.postgres.org and stick anything older than a version of two
> there. We could still link to it, and leave some redirects in place
> for old links, but the new subdomain would ensure that they would
> have relatively *low* Google results compared to the more recent
> docs, which is what we want.

Don't we have enough silly domains already? If we want to get rid of
those hits, why don't we just add a robots.txt and tell google not to
index the old docs at all? (If people *need* hits in the old docs, they
can always hit our own search engine for those docs)

//Magnus

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From: "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:37:55 -0000

> Wouldn't this be better on -www? :-P

I considered that, but this seems more of an advocacy problem
with a technical solution. I thought the wider advocacy audience
might have some ideas about it.

> can always hit our own search engine for those docs)

I considered that, but I would not want to completely eliminate the
old docs from Google searching. There's always a chance something useful is
there. However, since 99.9% of generic non-version specific searches should
*not* hit those pages, it's best to stick those on the "e" in
Goooooooooooooooooooooooogle. :)

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane [email-masked]
End Point Corporation
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200608290634
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

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From: Devrim GUNDUZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:20:14 +0300

Hello,

On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 09:56 +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> Don't we have enough silly domains already? 

Heh.

olddocs.postgresql.org
veryolddocs.postgresql.org
atticdocs.postgresq
rarelyuseddocs.postgresql.org

...
:)
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From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:07:56 -0400

> rarelyuseddocs.postgresql.org

ifyouarestillrunningthisversionthedocswonthelpyou.postgresql.org

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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From: "Joshua D. Drake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 09:11:42 -0700

> ifyouarestillrunningthisversionthedocswonthelpyou.postgresql.org

Let's just shorten that to:

youarefscked.postgresql.org

Joshua D. Drake

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From: "Dawid Kuroczko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 07:30:48 +0200

> compared to the more recent docs, which is what we want.

Wouldn't it be feasible to add a "see current version" link
which would link from all the old versions to the most current
one?  Say, a page
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/static/ecpg-errors.html
...would have a line in a header:
Home → Documentation → Manuals → PostgreSQL 7.4 (See current version)
...where (See current version) would link to:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/ecpg-errors.html

As far as I understand how Google works, this would push
the link density towards the current version of PostgreSQL,
therefore 8.1 should pop out as top results.

Just a thought. :)

   Regards,
      Dawid