Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I’m taking the new MT weblog out for a spin. It’s new location is http://weblog.burningbird.net, existing as a separate virtual host to isolate it from my other web sites.
Be aware that this is a test spin, only. The weblog doesn’t have the backend work finished, which is going to take at least a few days; and there’s no connectivity between the ported entries and the existing comments.
A major change with the new weblog — no Google. I’ve effectively told Google that it isn’t welcome within the new weblogging environment.
If you’re familiar with web spiders and bots, then you’ll know about the robots.txt file. This file is located at the root of the web site and provides information for various bots as to which directories can be accessed by which bots. In the case of the new weblog, I’ve added entries to the robots.txt file that all bots are forbidden access to the entire weblogging web site except for blogging specific bots such as the Daypop bot.
As I’ve found by careful analysis of log files in the last few months, Google doesn’t provide any value within the weblogging environment. For instance, look at recent search terms:
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- email spammer
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- add node to morpheus
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- from hell’s heart i stab at the
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- hallelujah shrek wav
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- fire bird cars
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- romance and respect
I think what finally decided me on this decision is when the weblog got a hit for the term orange prison jumpsuit after my CT scan weblog entry of a couple of days ago.
Yes, these Google search results lead people here, but what does this buy? The people who come are looking for specific information, not personal ramblings with accidental groupings of words. All Google is doing is wasting my bandwidth. And if you think on it, my weblog is impacting on the accuracy of Google searches.
If we had more sophisticated search systems based on a more elegant meta-language such as RDF, then general search engines such as Google could be more effectively combined with weblogging.
I do have weblog postings that would be effective resources for Google and I have a plan in place for these — to be discussed in a future post. I also have a plan in place for people specifically looking for my weblog through Google. Again, to be discussed at a future time when everything’s ready to go.
Unfortunately, one of the negatives with the no Google approach is that my weblog’s Google page rank will be zero — no rank at all. This means that I’ll be one of the weblogging unclean. People will come to my weblog and they’ll think to themselves, “Poor girl. No one links to her. No one must like her.” I will be cast out into the desert of the Google disenfranchised. I will no longer be a part of the Great Collective.
Cool.