wakasmJul 15, 2023

How come there is very little Kbin SEO for individual posts? Also, what are tags/badges?

Maybe someone smarter than me can explain things, but It's been about a month since I've started the process of creating a magazine to support the reddit/discord community I've helped mod for the past 4 years... but I've noticed that zero posts show up in google search.... #RedditMigration

https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/199614

How come there is very little Kbin SEO for individual posts? Also, what are tags/badges? - RedditMigration - kbin.social

Maybe someone smarter than me can explain things, but It's been about a month since I've started the process of creating a magazine to support the reddit/discord community I've helped mod for the past 4 years... but I've noticed that zero posts show up in google search....

Show threadraphael

kbin.social disallows crawlers to index the site. And honest crawlers will honor that.
https://kbin.social/robots.txt

This actually seems to be the standard configuration that kbin ships with, so most instances will have that in place.

Jul 15, 2023 at 8:11amWeb
Show threadthingsiplayJul 15, 2023
@raphael Why is that? To prevent the site and posts becoming ad focused? I mean I can see that as a benefit. But on the other side, content that is not indexed by search machines is not much different from Discord. I always criticized Discord content for not being indexed, when arguing with my bro, and tell why Reddit (or any other open platform) is much better to post. Honestly, kbin disallowing crawlers to index the site is a big blow to me! I don't like that at all.
Show threadraphaelJul 15, 2023

🤷‍♂️
It is just a decision that every instance owner can make for themselves (if they are aware of it).

It will be a huge headache for search engines anyways, all posts are basically replicated across all instances and look local to a search engine. So for a single post it will have hundreds of copies in its database and probably outputting all of them as results (for now).

Show threadfearoutJul 15, 2023
Is it possible/reasonable to have some sort of a fediverse-encompassing api for search engines that would help index only the original threads? A separate instance maybe? Or is it going to stay as is?
Show threadelscallrJul 16, 2023
The search engines are going to have to deal with that. However you can provide context in the instance in the form of a canonical URL, to tell a search engine where content originated.
How to Specify a Canonical with rel="canonical" and Other Methods | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers

When a site has duplicate content, Google chooses the canonical URL. Learn more about canonical URLs and how to consolidate duplicate URLs.

Google for Developers
Show threadHypxJul 16, 2023
@fearout It just occurred to me that all you need is your own server and you just need to index that server only. It basically gets data from all other instances through the standard activityPub protocol. It works differently than traditional crawlers, but the outcome is the same.
Show threadwakasmJul 15, 2023

Thanks, I totally forgot that robots.txt existed. Since you are replying, do you know the difference between badges and tags?

I wonder if there some way for instances to use the canonical tag to point to the original and make it less annoying for search engines.

That said, I guess id rather see it crawled and let search engines figure it out then have it not crawled at all. Not really sure where that feedback goes though.

Show threadanemomylosJul 15, 2023
"Tags" are similar to twitter hashtags, you can use them to categorize a post. For example, if you create a post about Android you can add the tag "android" (without "#"). When you manage a magazine you can add one or more tags (always without "#") to see posts of the fediverse with that tag.
I have no idea about "badges" :)