- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 07:42:41 +0000 (GMT)
- To: www-html@w3.org
> <meta name="index" content="no">
>
> [...] (NO indexed code, i.e. navigation menu)
>
> <meta name="index" content="yes">
This is off topic ("how to question"). However there is an implied
proposal here to extend (X)HTML.
You should probably review the recent discussion on Google's anti-blog
spamming tactic (their technique is generally considered an abuse here).
However, in my view, the only reasonable SGML (HTML) and XML (XHTML)
tactics here would be the use of a new, universal, attribute on the
element that you should already be using to bracket this structurally
significant part of the document, or possibly the use of processing
instructions.
Processing instructions can be fairly explicit in their intended
effect on the search engines, but attributes need to be thought about
carefully to ensure that they describe the nature of the element,
not how it is intended to be processed.
Singleton elements that turn on an off a global state are too like
the way that early GUI browser mis-implemented presentational
elements, resulting in tag souping coding tacticts, like overlapped
elements. Any use of elements or attributes needs to contain the
structure, not be sentinels either side of it.
Assuming that you don't control the search engine, neither of these
are likely to be taken up by the major search engines, even though they
would be easy to deploy in as much as they don't require browser updates.
That's because they are too structural in nature for the average web
author and will almost never be used by authors.
Note that, in terms of standards actively being developed, there already
is a navigation list element in XHTML 2.
Received on Monday, 14 March 2005 08:43:18 UTC