- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@iinet.net.au>
- Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:26:11 +1100
- To: Asbjørn Ulsberg <asbjorn@tigerstaden.no>
- CC: Anne van Kesteren <fora@annevankesteren.nl>, Jens Meiert <jens.meiert@erde3.com>, www-html@w3.org
Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote: > A better value could have been e.g. «no-credit» or «none» which says > that the current document does not credit the referenced one > («no-credit») or does not have any relation to the referenced document > at all («none»). «nofollow» is just wrong. Indeed, nofollow is an extremely poor choice and I consider the relationship to be quite harmful [1]. However, "no-credit" is not much better because, although it more accurately describes its function, it says nothing about the relationship between the resources, nothing about what the linked-resource is, nor the purpose of the link. ie. It does not express any semantics whatsoever. Additionally such values make no sense in the context of any type of user agent, other than a search engine that uses the some kind page-rank, or equivalent, algorithm; which just empahsises the fact that it's yet another useless, proprietary extension. Better choices would express something like the link originated as a result of a user contribution and/or the document author/owner does not implicitly endorse the link. Using such values a search engine, for example, may then determine whether or not the linked resources is at all related to the content of the linking document before issuing any credit for the link – completely unrelated documents should not be issued any credit. In that way, some illigitimate pharmaceuticals site (or other spammer) is unlikely to benefit from spamming a blog relating to web development, yet a commenter that links to their blog entry on the same topic will. Of course, that is much more complicated than a simple yes/no style relationship like nofollow, but the more semantic approach should not adversely affect the vast majority of legitimate contributors, as nofollow does. Additionally because the relationship expresses the semantics of the link, rather than how it should be used by one particular type of UA, it is possible for others to do something else more useful with it that may benefit the user. [1] http://lachy.id.au/blogs/log/2005/01/link-relationships-revisited-part-1 -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ http://GetFirefox.com/ Rediscover the Web http://SpreadFirefox.com/ Igniting the Web
Received on Friday, 21 January 2005 06:07:11 UTC