> On 14 Apr 2022, at 18:23, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 1:25 AM Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> wrote:
>> If we want to keep outdated version away from the search results they need a
>> noindex attribute in <head>:
>>
>> <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
>
> I see.
>
> Do you think that doing so for out of support releases would improve
> our search results? Do you see any potential downsides?
I don't really have a good answer, googlebot et.al acts in mysterious ways. It
shouldn't affect searching for up to date information since we identify
/current as the canonical version of pages in backbranches (supported or not).
But if an 8.4 page is indexed and linked to from a gazillion stack overflow
posts, then who knows how that shifts the results.
Given how it works right now, and what we know, I would err on the side of
caution and keep them indexed - but that's a highly unscientifically based
opinion.
--
Daniel Gustafsson https://vmware.com/