Обсуждение: SEO for documentation
Hi all, Like most folks, I imagine, I use google to search for postgres documentation, helping find the chapter I'm looking for by searching for a term or a GUC, etc'. The postgres doc website is always in the top hits, but the versions shown are usually out of data. Examples: postgres wal_level: PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.3: Write Ahead Log PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.1: Write Ahead Log PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.0: Write Ahead Log Hot Standby - PostgreSQL wiki postgres log shipping : PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.0: Log-Shipping Standby Servers PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.1: Log-Shipping Standby Servers PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.4: Log-Shipping Standby Servers PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.1: Alternative Method for Log Shipping postgres warm standby: Warm Standby Servers for High Availability - PostgreSQL Warm Standby - PostgreSQL wiki PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.3: Log-Shipping Standby Servers PostgreSQL: Documentation: 9.0: Log-Shipping Standby Servers Now, perhaps most users are using 9.1 or 9.3 (and why is 9.2 no where to be seen?), but I'm interested in 9.4 or dev usually and these often don't show up in the hits. It seems a small thing, but in the last few days I've been spending lost of time with the docs and this inconsistency can become annoying quite quickly. I think google gives webmasters some control over the navigation to their site, by cooperating with their crawler. Perhaps a sitemap could change things for the better. Just a guess, SEO is not my field. So, can something be done about this? If the website is instrumented for it, can you check how many landings on /docs immediately navigate to another version? that would give sime idea of how common this pain is. Regards, Amir
<p dir="ltr"><br /> On 26 Sep 2015 05:45, "Amir Rohan" <<a href="mailto:amir.rohan@mail.com">amir.rohan@mail.com</a>>wrote:<br /> ><br /> > It seems a small thing, but inthe last few days I've been spending<br /> > lost of time with the docs and this inconsistency can become annoying<br/> > quite quickly.<br /> > I think google gives webmasters some control over the navigation<br /> >to their site, by cooperating with their crawler. Perhaps<br /> > a sitemap could change things for the better. Justa guess,<br /> > SEO is not my field.<br /> ><br /> > So, can something be done about this? If the website isinstrumented<br /> > for it, can you check how many landings on /docs immediately navigate<br /> > to another version?that would give sime idea of how common this<br /> > pain is.<p dir="ltr">I looked into this when I was workingat Google. There have been some improvements in the area but it's still not satisfactory in my opinion. And its notjust us, the same problem is endemic in Java documentation and a lot of similar projects.<p dir="ltr">My only suggestionis perhaps we should have a whole separate domain for the current version documentation and treat that as the canonicalURL and try to get everyone to link there. Then separately have a domain for old documentation but include headerson the pages urging people to link to the other site.<p dir="ltr">No amount of fiddling with the site map or pagetags will help though. Those things can help Google find the right pages but here the problem is that Google knows aboutboth pages and thinks the older one is more relevant to your search.
On 09/26/2015 02:00 PM, Greg Stark wrote: > > On 26 Sep 2015 05:45, "Amir Rohan" <amir.rohan@mail.com > <mailto:amir.rohan@mail.com>> wrote: >> >> So, can something be done about this? If the website is instrumented >> for it, can you check how many landings on /docs immediately navigate >> to another version? that would give sime idea of how common this >> pain is. > > <...> > My only suggestion is perhaps we should have a whole separate domain for > the current version documentation and treat that as the canonical URL > and try to get everyone to link there. Then separately have a domain for > old documentation but include headers on the pages urging people to link > to the other site. > > No amount of fiddling with the site map or page tags will help though. > Those things can help Google find the right pages but here the problem > is that Google knows about both pages and thinks the older one is more > relevant to your search. > I'm not sure a new domain is necessary. - Google rankings are supposed to reflect user preference - They gauge user preference by inspecting the links people post in various places. - The site's link structure overwhelmingly shapes the links people post. So what the web team needs to do is to have people end up with "/docs/current" links in their address bar and "copy link" results as often as possible. The site isn't currently designed to do that. At all. If you: 1) Replace the navbar current version link to always point at "/docs/current" (available now, but not used on the website) 2) Add a redirect rule to the server so that people accessing direct links to the current version are redirected to "/docs/current" You'll get people linking to "/docs/current" far more often. Asking users to change their behavior won't work nearly as well as adjusting the systems and defaults they naturally go along with. Once people are consistently linking to "/docs/current", google's algo is bound to detect this over time. As a bonus, that path will dominate other versions over time, unlike now where every new version causes fresh links to be posted that compete with older ones. The signal strength for "/docs/current" will come to swamp out the others, if you will, because it reflects "all versions (from now on)" and not just a particular one. Of course who knows how google's makes its sausage, but common sense tells me that this should work much better, by giving google algo what what it's looking for, and helping it do what it is trying to do. Amir
On 09/26/2015 11:55 PM, Amir Rohan wrote: > > If you: > 1) Replace the navbar current version link to always point at > "/docs/current" (available now, but not used on the website) > 2) Add a redirect rule to the server so that people accessing direct > links to the current version are redirected to "/docs/current" > > You'll get people linking to "/docs/current" far more often. It's circumstantial evidence at best, but Spring Framework does things this way and their google results are much cleaner. Mosy searches for "Spring foo", where foo is a documented topic lead to their /docs/current path. See: http://projects.spring.io/spring-framework/ Also, Related thread from april 2014: <04E4F5A6-6526-4DDC-A9E5-2991E3B2ED83@cantoute.com> Regards, Amir
On 09/30/2015 09:55 AM, Amir Rohan wrote: > On 09/26/2015 11:55 PM, Amir Rohan wrote: >> >> If you: >> 1) Replace the navbar current version link to always point at >> "/docs/current" (available now, but not used on the website) >> 2) Add a redirect rule to the server so that people accessing direct >> links to the current version are redirected to "/docs/current" >> >> You'll get people linking to "/docs/current" far more often. > > > It's circumstantial evidence at best, but Spring Framework > does things this way and their google results are much > cleaner. Mosy searches for "Spring foo", where foo is > a documented topic lead to their /docs/current path. > > See: http://projects.spring.io/spring-framework/ > > Also, Related thread from april 2014: > <04E4F5A6-6526-4DDC-A9E5-2991E3B2ED83@cantoute.com> > > Regards, > Amir > > CC Dave Page, who raised the same issue in February. <CA+OCxoyib65Xx3sG3u=SmkNY7zxacNDVSvDYEowh2ptPxA_wAw@mail.gmail.com>