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Riccardo
Minister for Railways
Joined: Aug 20, 2003
Last Visited: Nov 3, 2008
Location: Elsewhere
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:25 pm
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Greenhill and others
What's the policy of having googlebots crawling this board?
I posted a thread the other day and it was on google within minutes - I doubt that was coincidence.
Public figures (and newly public figures like Catherine above) can google themselves and come here and promote anti-rail perspectives. This is unnecessary and if you end up shutting down such threads, you only have yourself to blame.
We've already had the woman from the Mt Laburnum saga come in and get banned - why encourage them?
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
| Post edited by michaelgreenhill | | Title edited to reflect actual content. - Railpage Australia™ |
If you need to get in touch, drop a comment at the Transport Textbook or on my blog.
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drwaddles
In need of a breath mint
Joined: Aug 16, 2006
Last Visited: Nov 14, 2008
Location: Lifting the A-League trophy!
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:35 pm
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I'd prefer to keep google-bots - seeing as the search facility on this site is pretty awful, google is a handy and fast option for finding threads.
People who talk out their asre usually have bad breath.
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Metro Transit
Minister for Railways
Joined: Mar 08, 2006
Last Visited: Nov 20, 2008
Location: Stony Point Line & Frankston in Zone 3
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 10:51 pm
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| Riccardo wrote: | Greenhill and others
What's the policy of having googlebots crawling this board?
I posted a thread the other day and it was on google within minutes - I doubt that was coincidence.
Public figures (and newly public figures like Catherine above) can google themselves and come here and promote anti-rail perspectives. This is unnecessary and if you end up shutting down such threads, you only have yourself to blame. |
Don't they have a right to see what is being said about them and be able to comment back?
Metro II.
Metro Transit - For King and Country
Minister for Cultural and Ethnic Affairs, Minister for the Arts.
"Outstanding Contributor of the Month - September"
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TheLoadedDog
El Sombrero!
Joined: Jun 19, 2003
Last Visited: Sep 28, 2008
Location: Macquarie Fields NSW
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:00 pm
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Riccardo as a board admin elsewhere (and you are a site owner yourself), I reckon the googlebots are like the "good bacteria" we hear about in yoghurt ads.
They bring more traffic - good and bad - to the board. The mods/admins can then cull the scumbags, hopefully to a positive net result.
I've seen too many ultra-high security online communities die of slow suffocation to think otherwise.
Humphrey! We're leaving!
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Somebody in the WWW
Comeng Gunzel
Joined: Oct 08, 2004
Last Visited: Nov 21, 2008
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:04 pm
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| Metro Transit wrote: | | Don't they have a right to see what is being said about them and be able to comment back? |
A legal right? Nope 
"The trains at Pennant Hills run roughly every half hour. Nobody in their right mind uses a service that shoddy. That so many do just proves how many dumb and/or desperate people there are in Sydney." - MrPC
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Metro Transit
Minister for Railways
Joined: Mar 08, 2006
Last Visited: Nov 20, 2008
Location: Stony Point Line & Frankston in Zone 3
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:24 pm
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| Somebody in the WWW wrote: | | Metro Transit wrote: | | Don't they have a right to see what is being said about them and be able to comment back? |
A legal right? Nope |
Well either way they can see what is being said, whether anyone wants to lower themselves and post back is up to them.
Metro II.
Metro Transit - For King and Country
Minister for Cultural and Ethnic Affairs, Minister for the Arts.
"Outstanding Contributor of the Month - September"
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mcclelland190
Junior Train Controller
Joined: Dec 28, 2006
Last Visited: Oct 17, 2008
Location: Wollongong, NSW - Australia
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Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:25 am
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The fact that it was on Google in minutes was just good timing.
Google's Spiders crawl sites often, and the more popular a site is, the less time in between crawls there are.
I'm back after a few months away!
Flight Simulator Nut!
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michaelgreenhill
Patron Saint of Alcohol
Joined: Jan 17, 1985
Last Visited: Nov 20, 2008
Location: Lost Somewhere In Time
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Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:04 pm
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| Riccardo wrote: | | What's the policy of having googlebots crawling this board? |
The exposure is great. Most of our referrers are from search engines, because as Railpage Australia™ covers such a wide range of railway topics anything from LNER to "Cityrail thugs" returns a result from Railpage Australia™.
| Riccardo wrote: | | I posted a thread the other day and it was on google within minutes - I doubt that was coincidence. |
Given that we don't control how often search crawlers index the site, it is coincidence.
| drwaddles wrote: | | I'd prefer to keep google-bots - seeing as the search facility on this site is pretty awful, google is a handy and fast option for finding threads. |
I keep telling people this - the search engine here isn't awful, it's just not used properly. The advantage of Google is the speed (it looks on its own database instead of our creaky, ancient one), and the simplicity.
| Metro Transit wrote: | | Don't they have a right to see what is being said about them and be able to comment back? |
Nope. Privately run website, y'know.
| El Sombrero wrote: | | They bring more traffic - good and bad - to the board. The mods/admins can then cull the scumbags, hopefully to a positive net result. |
We'd get the undesirables with or without the exposure from search engines.
The crawlers are staying 
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drwaddles
In need of a breath mint
Joined: Aug 16, 2006
Last Visited: Nov 14, 2008
Location: Lifting the A-League trophy!
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Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:35 pm
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| michaelgreenhill wrote: | | drwaddles wrote: | | I'd prefer to keep google-bots - seeing as the search facility on this site is pretty awful, google is a handy and fast option for finding threads. |
I keep telling people this - the search engine here isn't awful, it's just not used properly. The advantage of Google is the speed (it looks on its own database instead of our creaky, ancient one), and the simplicity. |
Perhaps I should have said "awfully slow" rather than just "awful" as the speed is the main problem I was referring to.
That, and I've had varied results between the google search and the in-site search despite using the same parameters.
All that said, Google handles my searching needs so I've no need to worry about the in-site facility unless the google gunzel-bots are going to be excluded from the party.
People who talk out their asre usually have bad breath.
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Tonymercury
Dr Beeching
Joined: May 17, 2003
Last Visited: Nov 20, 2008
Location: Botany NSW
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Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 5:43 am
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And I am getting the impression that the Railpage Australia™ search facility does NOT search thread titles - which is a pain.
Tony Bailey
A Yahoo Groups that may be of interest-
RailNewsInternational
A group designed to disseminate International news items.
To subscribe to it, you can just send a blank e-mail to-
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michaelgreenhill
Patron Saint of Alcohol
Joined: Jan 17, 1985
Last Visited: Nov 20, 2008
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Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 7:46 am
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Our search engine doesn't search the forum posts themselves - instead, it creates a search index of keywords and their related posts, and looks in that. The upside of this is a massive increase in search speed, but the downside is that you can't always find what you want, as the index excludes certain "common" words. Chances are your keyword(s) were simply in the common list
I don't have a problem with people using Google instead of our inbuilt search engine - I just wanted to clear a few points up
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