Mailing List Archive

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Google not indexing Wikisource for last few years now.
Why would Google want to start being honest and straightforward?
Cheers, Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Snow [mailto:wikipedia@frontier.com]
Sent: 19 January 2024 17:45
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Google not indexing Wikisource for last few years
now.

I realize SEO has its own jargon, but to those not immersed in the field
it is completely tautological to say a page is not indexed because "the
indexing process determines that the page is unlikely to be requested in
search." In an open-ended search, you aren't necessarily requesting a
specific page, you're only asking the search engine to point you to
pages that will hopefully be relevant to your query. It would be more
honest and straightforward for Google to say that "based on our
knowledge of what people search for, your page would appear so rarely
among the highest-ranked results that we're not going to bother
including it in our index."

--Michael Snow

On 1/19/2024 4:55 AM, nperry@wikimedia.org wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am Nicholas Perry, Senior Manager of Strategic Partnerships at WMF.
Following up on Jorge's previous email to add a summary of Google's recent
response to this issue, which was originally shared by Suman on this
Phabricator ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T325607.
>
> ----
> The web is really large and the search index can simply not include every
single page. A page that otherwise has no problems may not be indexed for a
myriad of complex reasons, for instance if the indexing process determines
that the page is unlikely to be requested in search. This is in line with
the Search Central documentation that states: "Google doesn't guarantee that
it will crawl, index, or serve your page, even if your page follows the
Google Search Essentials."
> ----
>
> Google also shared a document containing resource links, which can be
found in the Phabricator ticket. They also encouraged people to submit any
questions and attend their SEO Office Hours
(https://developers.google.com/search/help/office-hours), with the caveat
that Google might not be able to answer all questions in a given instance.
>
> Best,
>
> Nicholas
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/
message/N2DTL2NU377YCEGAQAVRF7EPCGB76OAB/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org

--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software.
www.avg.com
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/E2ZX7E5ABTFXKLUWS2MNVWTBMXJPBKYO/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org