Re: AW: Thoughts on wpd.mx domain

I'm not sure this is a problem. If we look at a link we've talked about
before — and so it was published on lists.w3.org[1]:

http://wpd.mx/apis/canvas

is indexed, but it gives it's page rank juice to:

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

Starting at 0 juice, doesn't http://wpd.mx/apis/canvas have a page rank of
0, because it's "given it away"? And isn't
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas  juicer as a result?

So when I search for "apis/canvas" in google,
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas  comes up first. And I don't
see wpd.mx at all. 

http://wpd.mx/apis/canvas may show up in results page, but always below
http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/canvas, no? It's a 301-redirect and
treated as such, so the page rank will go to the canonical version.

Speaking of the canonical version, we might want to add canonical to all the
reference pages, anyway, for various reasons.

Regards.

Julee

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webplatform/2013Feb/0019.html

----------------------------
julee@adobe.com
@adobejulee

From:  David Kirstein <frozenice@frozenice.de>
Date:  Tuesday, April 23, 2013 1:18 AM
To:  'PhistucK' <phistuck@gmail.com>, 'pdsouza' <pdsouza@about.com>
Cc:  'Doug Schepers' <schepers@w3.org>, "public-webplatform@w3.org"
<public-webplatform@w3.org>
Subject:  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
<http://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/ <http://webplatform.org/> s/some-short-thing

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

​
​

 
☆PhistucK
 

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 <tel:2013>  at 10:16 AM, Patrick D'Souza
<pdsouza@about.com> wrote:
We could prevent any short links being indexed under webplatform.org
<http://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
<http://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
<http://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 <http://wpd.mx>  has been setup
> as a url
> shortener for webplatform.org <http://webplatform.org>  urls. for e.g.
> wpd.mx/apis/canvas <http://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 <http://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 <http://webplatform.org> . I propose we use this url shortener
> on webplatform.org <http://webplatform.org>
> itself for e.g. webplatform.org/font-size <http://webplatform.org/font-size>
> which would redirect to
> docs.webplatform.org/css/properties/font-size
> <http://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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