Comments on: It’s not the technical details http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2005/10/26/its-not-the-technical-details/ Notes From A Strange Place Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:24:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 By: Andy http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2005/10/26/its-not-the-technical-details/#comment-6363 Andy Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:19:43 +0000 http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2005/10/26/its-not-the-technical-details/#comment-6363 One difference is that you would expect crawlers in public areas, but not in private ones (unless you invite crawlers into your restricted areas specifically, which would be weird). And since when were blog inches supposed to correlate with real importance? One difference is that you would expect crawlers in public areas, but not in private ones (unless you invite crawlers into your restricted areas specifically, which would be weird).

And since when were blog inches supposed to correlate with real importance?

]]> By: Adam http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2005/10/26/its-not-the-technical-details/#comment-6362 Adam Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:54:37 +0000 http://www.gravitystorm.co.uk/shine/archives/2005/10/26/its-not-the-technical-details/#comment-6362 The story about the website was important and the message was this: The public web used to be this way. The same arguments happened there and all the search engines were pricks and they crawled anything. Could they have been nice and waited for sites to opt in for crawling? Sure, but you wouldn't have search engines today. The feedback loop (search is useful which motivates sites to add themselves to search, which makes it so useful...) would have been very slow and you would have had a polite web which was mostly useless. GWA has causes far more blog inches than real effects. It's far from the only program which does that sort of thing and the others have more installs. But its simple existence is causing people to change. Sure, they're repeating themselves ten years later about how terrible search engines^W^W web accelerators are, but (very) slowly does it and by the time GWA launches it should be safe. The story about the website was important and the message was this: The public web used to be this way. The same arguments happened there and all the search engines were pricks and they crawled anything.

Could they have been nice and waited for sites to opt in for crawling? Sure, but you wouldn’t have search engines today. The feedback loop (search is useful which motivates sites to add themselves to search, which makes it so useful…) would have been very slow and you would have had a polite web which was mostly useless.

GWA has causes far more blog inches than real effects. It’s far from the only program which does that sort of thing and the others have more installs. But its simple existence is causing people to change. Sure, they’re repeating themselves ten years later about how terrible search engines^W^W web accelerators are, but (very) slowly does it and by the time GWA launches it should be safe.

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