I was reading this post about link directories and thinking about the link directory I've been meaning to add to my own site. When I was first putting together my blog I went and researched all the recent additions to HTML in the decade or so since I'd last put together a website, and it was really depressing when I realized how much of the stuff that initially seemed neat semantically was really just SEO nonsense. I don't want to have to add a bunch of attributes to every HTML element to make Google happy or to exclude Google. I just want to not be bothered.
So like...what if I just put <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">1 in my HTML templates or an X-Robots-Tag header in my web server config and be done with it?
Like, if I ever got into webcomics again, or if I were putting together a reference site, I could see some value in being indexed by search engines. But it's my personal blog. Think about how algorithm-driven social media sites dump Internet randos on you. Why would I invite that same thing from a search engine? I don't care about widespread distribution for my blog. I just want a thing I can link to, and let other people link to it, and folks can discover it organically.
Gonna have to think about this one.
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Supposedly this is more reliable than robots.txt because even if your site isn't crawled, other people's links to your site can result in it being indexed. Presumably it is in Google's business interests to not honor the intent of my banning them via robots.txt.
the confounding factor is we don't really trust search engines to do it, not while they're hurting. in times of plenty they might, but none of these measures are legally binding and Google in particular is quite desperate lately.
but also i very much Do Not Need (as in, it's not required) my website/blog to be actively visible for much of anything.. because that's my privilege of having a job and thus me not having to be Visible Online
but it is something i've been chewing about as well on top of everything lol
