{"id":393,"date":"2004-08-24T23:06:30-04:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-25T07:06:30+00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/wordpress\/?p=393"},"modified":"2006-04-30T14:10:47-04:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-30T19:10:47+00:00","slug":"xmdp-style-robot-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/2004\/08\/24\/xmdp-style-robot-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"XMDP-style Robot Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m thinking that HTML should have an element that basically says content within this section may contain links from external sources; just because they are here does not mean we are endorsing them.<\/q><\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

I’m not convinced an HTML extension is necessary or desirable. Instead, I think this might be better handled through a back door<\/a> approach.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

…imagine allowing a div that lets you block out links or sections of a page not to index\/follow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

It’s a simple idea, really: use an XHTML MetaData Profile<\/a> and specially-named classes to indicate whether the content of an element should be considered in some way undesirable<\/cite> to a robot. This has several advantages over creating a new element, particularly that it preserves backward and forward compatibility with HTML and XHTML: it’s just a use of an ability that’s there already. It also has an advantage over specially-formatted comments<\/a> in that it doesn’t require tag-soup<\/cite> handling of XML documents.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Like XFN<\/a>, the use of special classnames would be indicated by an HTML metadata profile<\/a>. It might be desirable to have the classnames namespaced<\/a>–really just another use of the profile attribute–or otherwise made unique so they could be identified without the profile, but for now I’ll stick with the simple case.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

On to some examples. The first shows the use of the profile http:\/\/example.org\/ignore<\/samp>, which indicates that the content marked with an ignore-content<\/samp> class is not to be used in indexing the page.<\/p>\r\n

<head profile=\"http:\/\/example.org\/ignore\"<\/strong>>\r\n...\r\n<div class=\"ignore-content\"<\/strong>>There once was a man from Nantucket...<\/div><\/em>\r\n<p>This is not about <span class=\"ignore-content\"<\/strong>>porn<\/span><\/em>.<\/p><\/code><\/pre>\r\n\r\n
Next, let’s mark some links as not to be followed; example.{tld}<\/samp> links shouldn’t be followed anyway, but this will reinforce that.  The text is fair game, though.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<head profile=\"http:\/\/example.org\/ignore\"<\/strong>>\r\n...\r\n<p class=\"ignore-links\"<\/strong>>This is <a href=\"http:\/\/example.com\/bogus\">a bogus link<\/a><\/em>\r\nand so is <a href=\"http:\/\/example.net\/bogus\">this<\/a>.<\/p><\/em><\/code><\/pre>\r\n\r\n
Finally, we’ll cause an entire page to be ignored, similar to the <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow,noarchive”><\/samp> convention.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
<head profile=\"http:\/\/example.org\/ignore\"<\/strong>>\r\n...\r\n<body class=\"ignore-content ignore-links\"<\/strong>>\r\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/example.com\/\">hot girls<\/a> cooled off with a glass of ice water.<\/p><\/em><\/code><\/pre>\r\n\r\n
So, there it is.  Is this worth following up?  Would GMPG<\/a> be interested?  (I think it follows their principles<\/a>.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n
These are a few of the references and sources for this proposal that haven’t been linked above.  In no particular order, and subject to expansion:<\/p>\r\n