Since I got an early detour in part two, today I will not present you “robots.txt for Dummies” as intended, but use the presentation Mrs. Marissa Mayer, Vice President for Google, gave the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation during the hearing on “The Future of Journalism”. Here’s a brief, since the document linked before is simply too boring:
- Google is a <…> search engine that people use to find answers online
- Stories on Google News <..> are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology
- Using a “robots.txt” file, a publisher can block its Web content from any search engine’s crawl
- in 2008, Google AdSense exceeded $5 billion in revenue for <..> publishers
- the authoritativeness of news articles might grow if an evolving story were published under a permanent, single URL as a living, changing, updating entity
The delivery in itself is long and stuffed with Google propaganda. For those of us just starting in SEO, the 5 points above can be translated in simple calls to action:
- You must rank in Google SERP to be successful.
- Google doesn’t care about right and wrong, black or white etc. Keywords and context determine ranking.
- If you know about it, it’s old news. The only content robots don’t see is the content not present on the web.
- There’s a lot of money out there. Google is just a tool to get to it.
- Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo lenses and Twitter timelines grow in authority faster by their nature. Use it to your advantage.
SEO must be approached in a pragmatic manner. Mrs. Mayer’s words might be just those of a speech-delivering corporate drone, but she gives clear hints on what Google likes or not. It’s up to you to use it to your advantage - and if you read behind the line “You can make money without doing evil”, you will discover the double-thinking since it is an urge, and not a declaration.
