Re: Dear Lazy Web: Pseudo Randomisation Strategies on Listing Websites

'Twas brillig, and Ashley Sheridan at 20/08/10 15:29 did gyre and gimble: > If you use a sitemap specific to a search engine (Google sitemap for > example) then you can specify how often a page changes, or tell it not > to index at all. This could help a little in preventing getting > penalised by a search engine for the indexed content never matching what > a user actually does see. Yeah we do that already (partly to reduce being hammered by bots, but also because there is no point in indexing too oftent!) > It brings to mind what a lot of companies do to ensure they are popular > in the phonebook. Ever noticed how there are an unusually high number of > companies towards the extreme ends of the alphabet. It was a deliberate > ploy to get as near to the first or last listing in a phonebook, which > was always done alphabetically (with the exception of paid-for listings > which were usually as larger adverts alongside the regular listings) So > you end up with AAA Cars, AA Electricians, ZZ Plumbers, ZYX Mechanics, > etc. Yeah this was a problem for us a few years ago and we had to actually disable users from editing their own "thing" names for some clients. This allowed our clients to keep a solid control over it and make sure that the name were relevant and accurate! Col -- Colin Guthrie gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie http://colin.guthr.ie/ Day Job: Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/] Open Source: Mandriva Linux Contributor [http://www.mandriva.com/] PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/] Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]