discuss: Which Licenses Should LDP Recommend? GFDL
Subject:
Re: Which Licenses Should LDP Recommend? GFDL
From:
Randy Kramer ####@####.####
Date:
26 Apr 2001 17:54:24 -0000
Message-Id: <3AE85FC3.45B0@fast.net>
Using a robots.txt file to limit how many mirrors get indexed in search
engines like Google sounds like a very good idea! Like Henry says, it
would limit the "pollution" on Google, and lessen the traffic to the
mirror sites. (The LDP site, then, would have to have a good list of
mirrors and a prominent pointer to that list.)
(Just trying to register my vote! (But not precluding any other
suggestions.))
Randy Kramer
Henry Kingman wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 11:58:45PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:
>
> > The problem is that a lot of people use search engines which are most
> > likely to get hits on commercial sites instead of LDP sites. This is
> > due to promotion. Some search engines can be even be paid to give a
> > high priority to a site. Listing a lot of keywords, etc. helps.
> > Thus a lot of people may get to a site with ads. The license could
> > prevent this. I think most volunteer authors don't want ads put into
> > their work. Now if it's just a modest link to a sponsor, it's not so
> > bad.
>
> On ZDNet's LDP mirror, I see almost no referrals at all from search
> engines. Our mirror operated for years, even before my boss made me
> put ads on it, and it does show up on search results pages... but
> pretty far from the top still.
>
> One problem is that LDP content is starting to badly
> pollute search results, especially for the google.com/linux search.
> Query any vaguely Linux-ish word and you get five pages of results,
> all to the same LDP page over and over again.
>
> Has the LDP ever considered including a simple robots.txt file as
> part of the mirror? I'll bet most mirror sites would be glad to
> save the bandwidth charges, as those bots really load your pipe
> as well as your server when they get in there, at very little
> benefit to your traffic as far as I can tell.
>
> Sorry for the off-topic, non-license-related suggestion.
>
> Well, but maybe part of the license could be that only a few
> well-placed, daily-updated sites would be given permission to
> change the "no robots" stuff, I don't know (which would also
> help with the staleness factor).
>
> -Henry
>
>
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