AW: Thoughts on wpd.mx domain

Heya,

 

I agree that wpd.mx links shouldn't be listed on search engines and I added a robots.txt to help with that; don't know what else can be done (ideas are welcome). My thoughts always were that 301 redirects weren't indexed anyway (only the redirect target would get indexed).

Twitter / social media isn't really the prime use case for wpd.mx (it was a bad example I gave), same with linking to WPD from a blog or something (I'd expect people to use the full URL when linking to WPD). It’s more intended for slides and Doc Sprint Dashboards, there can even be custom shortlinks, see  <https://github.com/webplatform/Shortlinks> https://github.com/webplatform/Shortlinks.

 

Performance-wise the redirect isn’t really noticeable, the main loading time comes from the wiki itself.

 

I don't really see a point in making webplatform.org/* or webplatform.org/something/* redirect to the wiki, we already have this for docs.webplatform.org/*. It also would suffer from the same possible problems as wpd.mx, it’s just a different domain (also it’s kind of a long one for a URL shortener). And I guess redirects like webplatform.org/font-size to docs.webplatform.org/css/properties/font-size would be maintained by hand then (because of possible overlap if you leave out css/properties/)?

 

 

-fro

 

Von: PhistucK [mailto:phistuck@gmail.com] 
Gesendet: Dienstag, 23. April 2013 09:41
An: pdsouza
Cc: Doug Schepers; public-webplatform@w3.org
Betreff: Re: Thoughts on wpd.mx domain

 

I think webplatform.org/some-short-thing is too simple and can be problematic.

It would be better if we at least prefix it somehow -

webplatform.org/s/some-short-thing

That would also be easier to disallow in robots.txt.

​

​

 

☆PhistucK

 

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Patrick D'Souza <pdsouza@about.com> wrote:

We could prevent any short links being indexed under webplatform.org by Disallowing it in robots.txt. This way we can continue to use the url shortener in slides etc without it being indexed.

On 04/23/2013 03:11 AM, Doug Schepers wrote:

Hi, Patrick-

As much as I appreciate Frozenice's many contributions, I feel the same way about this particular issue.

Before the launch, I bought the wpd.cc domain for the same purpose, but I was afraid of just this, that it would get indexed, so I didn't really promote it. I wasn't sure that it would be harmful; I'm glas that someone with SEO skills can speak definitively about it.

Lea pointed out earlier that Twitter has a fixed length for all links, so the shortener isn't needed there, and in fact they use their own shortener, so it would be doubly-redirected.

I do like the idea of shortlinks like webplatform.org/apis/canvas to http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas, for links in slides, etc. If Frozenice were to install his shortener on webplatform.org, would that still hurt SEO?

Regards-
-Doug



On 4/23/13 2:59 AM, Patrick D'Souza wrote:

Hi,

It has been brought to my notice that wpd.mx has been setup as a url
shortener for webplatform.org urls. for e.g. wpd.mx/apis/canvas 301s to
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas.

<http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas>


This url has been indexed by Google and I don't like the thought of
different urls pointing to the same content when a user is searching for
canvas in a search engine. It dilutes the positive effects of a
webplatform.org url.

Sorry to be a little picky but we should avoid all such short urls which
confuse a user and in turn result in duplicate content being served to
search engines. I see the benefit of a url shortener as it can be useful
in social media campaigns as well as brand promotion for
webplatform.org. I propose we use this url shortener on webplatform.org
itself for e.g. webplatform.org/font-size which would redirect to
docs.webplatform.org/css/properties/font-size. Every 301 is one
additional request for a user which is not good in terms of performance.
I would appreciate if we avoid 301s as far as possible unless it's
absolutely required. Always, keep it simple :)

Any thoughts and feedback are much appreciated.

- Patrick



 


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