Adding googleon/googleoff to portions of the right sidebar?

[perlancar]

A couple of times when I'm searching for some perlmonks users in Google (for example, say I want to know the threads in which "perlancar" posts something or is mentioned), what come up instead are pages where the username is found in the "Other Users" section in the right sidebar.

Google (and probably other search engines too) allow us to put hints to parts of a page which should not be indexed. In Google case, we can use the googleon/googleoff comments. The details are here: Excluding Unwanted Text from the Index p

[chacham]

For posts authored by a specific user, you can use Super Search's "Match -or- Exclude authors". Especially with "sections" and other options, the local search is far superior.

[QM]

...the local search is far superior.

Agreed. But I often find myself searching the wider net, and getting hits on pages that should really match my search terms. So if a user is named tie, I don't really want PM pages to bubble up just because I searched for "perl tie-dye pattern creation", when those pages only mention tie the user. There are probably other text areas on various pages that don't need indexing either.

[chacham]

when those pages only mention tie the user

Be aware, you can exclude a specific user's posts from search, too. So, in that case, had the page only shown because tie made a comment, it would be excluded from the local search.

The OP's suggestion is not a bad one, helping Google better find results here would be even better. Just don't forget PM's own awesome Super Search.

[Anonymous Monk]

If you want to search PerlMonks, use Super Search. Google search, while widely known, is comparatively stupid.

[Anonymous Monk]

a search engine specific comments? I don't think so

[perlancar]

Why not?

It's easy to do and should only take the site maintainer a couple of minutes.

It will help users get better (more relevant) Google search results.

If you fear we will end up adding specific codes for dozens of search engines, that fear is unfounded. Google is 70% of the search market share, so adding just the code for Google we'll get most of the gain.

From what I see, the googleon/googleoff tag was introduced since 2009 so it's quite mature.

Even if Google decides to ignore the tag, the tag is a normal HTML comment tag so it won't do any rendering harm.

[Anonymous Monk]

Why not?

Because it is non-standard and specific to one search engine only -- its like tailoring html to one browser only -- not good :)

It's easy to do and should only take the site maintainer a couple of minutes.

While this helps, it really has never been important consideration

It will help users get better (more relevant) Google search results.

Very doubtful

If you fear we will end up adding specific codes for dozens of search engines, that fear is unfounded. Google is 70% of the search market share, so adding just the code for Google we'll get most of the gain.

Take it as political advocacy, forget google :)

From what I see, the googleon/googleoff tag was introduced since 2009 so it's quite mature.

googleon is fundamentally immature

google has been indexing perlmonks a decade before; Super Search is even older. PerlMonks has had comments in html source that whole time. If google wanted to do something about it they had all these years.

Noindex claims Googlebot doesn't support googleon/googlef , says its a feature of the hardware Google Search Appliance, in other words , google doesn't want you to add these tags to the internet

Even if Google decides to ignore the tag, the tag is a normal HTML comment tag so it won't do any rendering harm.

:) comments, they're supposed to help devs/maintainers, not search engines

But seeing how googlebot/google will ignore them, since this feature is for owners of GooSeaApp (devs), it won't help us