Hi Dermod,

That backlink that you received occured from content which is no
longer displayed and which was indexed by Google/blogger before we
made initial changes- so it would not appear even if we did not make
further changes. We are still working on the old cahced page. One of
the complicating factors is that we were allowing comments where the
blog owner chose to allow comments. While this feature is rarely used
we didn't want to throw it out just yet. Here's what were going to do
with the old cached page: We're going to leave a link there to the
original post on the blog owners blog - in case the post is still
indexed in the search engines- but not show any of the post
content(i.e. no excerpt). If the post has the comments option turned
"off" (default option) then the page will display the robots meta tag
"noindex, follow". If the comments are turned on then the post and
comments will appear with no robots meta tag.

Overtime that page will disappear from any search engine - as there
will be no link to it (unless the blog owner has elected to turn
comments "on") - we've removed the "previous post" and "later post"
links from the template also.

As regards Page Rank, it is not known (despite speculation) whether
Google distributes Page Rank to pages that are linked from pages
marked "noindex". If it is the case that it doesn't pass on page rank
- then using the robots meta tag will result in lost page rank to the
bloggers' blogs. This will only be a temporary effect as over time
the page rank of that page will be zero as no pages will link to it.

As regards more communications and our irishblogs.ie blog - sorry
about the paucity of posts - but the issue is one of being stretched
thin on the ground and lack of time, with only few of us running <a
href="http://www.blogsome.com/">Blogsome</a> (with over 60,000 blogs),
making changes to <a href="http://www.irishblogs.ie">irishblogs.ie</a>
and developing our new Irish search engine, <a
href'"http:/www.scrudu.ie/news/">Scrúdú</a> (shameless plug ;)) not to
mention the recent arrival of a most beautiful baby daughter, Mia.

Regards,
Roger

--- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, "Bootboy" <bootboy@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Roger,
>
> I thought that you had changed things, but at
http://bonhom.ie/2006/05/parody-pastiche-or-real-thing.html at the
bottom there is a backlink pointing to a post of mine today - (as I've
said before, backlinks being Google Searches) - and it still points to
an Irish Blogs cache of my post, not to my original post, at
http://www.irishblogs.ie/post/parody-pastiche-or-the-real-thing%E2%84%A2-part-2
.
>
> Surely, you have to add "noindex, follow" in a robots meta header on
your individual post page, or it will get indexed by Google as soon as
it appears. Just adding the words "We currently only store excerpts.
To see the full post please click on the title." is not enough. The
reader shouldn't get to see that page in the first place, as it should
not be indexed as an individual item. Maybe you haven't got around to
it yet?
>
> Best wishes
>
> Dermod
> --
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: roger_galligan
> To: irishblogs@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 10:55 PM
> Subject: [irishblogs] Re: New poll for irishblogs
>
>
> I agree with Dermod. I was never very happy with having the cache
> copy. We put it there at the time probably for 2 reasons. Firstly it
> seemed to be what other aggregators were doing and secondly because we
> could. Both pretty bad reasons to do anything. We put the link to it
> in a very pale grey - which we thought we serve to decrease the link
> value for it. Rather than put noindex, follow - I think we should get
> rid of it altogether.
>
> I haven't noticed the cached copy do too well in Google, usually it's
> the category or similar post page that comes up, and if the cached
> copy is listed is usually together with the clustered content and
> would likely not have appeared in that position were it not for the
> clustered content.
>
> e.g:
>
http://www.google.ie/search?num=100&hl=en&q=rte%20blog%20dunphy&btnG=Search&meta\
=cr%3DcountryIE
>
> However I can understand how seeing the cached copy of your post ahead
> of your own copy could be annoying.
>
> Google loves to get clustered content. Any clustering algorithm is
> the flip side of a search algorithm. So category pages and similar-to
> pages are likely to contain more of the related terms to subject
> matter at hand than the individual post.
>
> I would say that 95% of the outbound Page Rank goes back to the
> bloggers (many Irish Bloggers have said to me that we are one of their
> top referrers after Google which also suggests that people are getting
> their directly from Google). Pretty much every outbound link from the
> site is to a blogger apart from the sponsors (by the way the
> "sponsors" do not pay us a cent - these are projects that we take time
> out of, to do IrishBlogs.ie and we still pay Servecentric for our
> hosting but we appreciate the deal they have given us). We're going
> to change the sponsors java drop down closed so you'll have to click
> on it to see them - we still have some tidy-up work to do on the
> righthand sidebar, particulary the new "The Buzz" section. I don't
> think we'll ever recoup the investment we've made in Irishblogs.ie
> although one day we may make something out of the learning and
> technology behind it, and we do enjoy working on it.
>
> I think the performance of the category pages and similar post pages
> in Google helps bloggers v. other media. In the example above we
> irishblogs appears above RTE and Unison. I think this is bringing
> bloggers voices to the attention of internet users at the expense of
> mainstream media, which of course is a good thing. I think that
> IrishBlogs.ie has helped to raise the profile of Irish Bloggers.
>
> I for one will be voting for Dermod's proposal and I'd go further - I
> don't think we should even keep a cached copy of the full post.
> (Likewise I don't think Google should have a "cache" option on their
> SERP's).
>
> I have another question:
> If we put Google ads or some other advertising in order to cover some
> of our costs would this upset anybody or what are people's views
on this?
>
> ...and thanks Dermod for voting for us at the awards.
>
> Regards,
> Roger
>
>
> --- In irishblogs@yahoogroups.com, irishblogs@yahoogroups.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > Enter your vote today! A new poll has been created for the
> > irishblogs group:
> >
> > Should <a href="http://irishblogs.ie">irishblogs.ie</a> stop
> allowing search engines to index their caches of individual posts of
> contributory blogs?
> >
> > As I wrote in <a
>
href="http://bonhom.ie/2006/05/irish-blogs-indexing-our-feeds.html">this
> post</a>, irishblogs.ie does not, at the moment, have the standard
> search robots setting of "noindex, follow". This means that it is,
> increasingly, taking traffic away from contributing blogs. Because
> search engines hate duplicates, if a search results page has two
> instances of a blog post, one will not be shown. Increasingly, the one
> that is displayed is the cached post at irishblogs.ie, as
> irishblogs.ie has greater authority/pagerank than most of its
> contributing blogs. This effectively means that irisbhlogs.ie is
> stealing the traffic of individual bloggers. People can read my words
> and yet irishblogs.ie gets the hit, the advertising exposure, the
> increase in pageranking (over time), and the opportunity to invite the
> reader to click elsewhere on their site. That reader should, by
> rights, be at my blog.
> >
> > The only time an aggregator should allow indexing of what it creates
> is at category pages, ie a page devoted to all the posts with the
> keyword "politics" for example. It deserves to get indexed by search
> engines because that is what aggregators are best at: to gather
> various posts together, creating original content. So a search for
> "irish politics" should return the irishblogs.ie "politics" tag page,
> and a valuable resource that is too. But it should not return any
> individual Irish blog post that mentions politics, at anything other
> than the source URL. Duplicating a blog post is not creating original
> content, and it should not be allowed to be indexed.
> >
> > I am calling for irishblogs.ie to account for their policy, and come
> up with a clearly worded Terms of Service for all to read that
> explains their indexing policy. Irishblogs.ie is a powerful, popular
> force in Irish blogging, and with power comes responsibility.
> >
> > Dermod
> >
> > o Yes, irishblogs.ie should change its setting for cached single
> posts to "noindex, follow"
> > o No, it's fine as it is
> >
> >
> > To vote, please visit the following web page:
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/irishblogs/surveys?id=2228497
> >
> > Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
> > not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
> > web site listed above.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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