Re: Search engine linking to latest docs

> This topic has been worked on for decades(!)
now on the pgsql-www mailing list

I thought I opened a new thread on what I thought was a newish topic, but I
guess it turns out I was just searching the wrong mailing list. Thanks for
the insights, I’ll consider this closed :)

On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 18:18 Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:

> On 7/25/22 6:08 PM, Trevor Gross wrote:
> > Hey all,
> >
> > I think the PG community is pretty aware that there are some issues with
> > search engines taking users to the right versions of the docs. You
> > google something simple like "postgres drop column" and the first
> > postgresql.org <http://postgresql.org> result takes you to the v7.4
> docs
> > - EOL over a decade ago. It's a similar story for many searches, lots of
> > results take you to v8 or v9 docs first.
>
> One of the efforts this year to improve it has already yielded results,
> where much more significant search traffic going to the latest docs
> (stats here):
>
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/25aa516b-4fa7-5083-366e-09cf4f838e0f@postgresql.org
>
> The 7.4 page does include the canonical link, but perhaps due to the
> amount of links going to the 7.4 ALTER TABLE page / the term not having
> been updated in awhile, it has not been reindex yet.
>
> (Perhaps these recent searches will help with that reindexing :)
>
> >
> > (Note that if you've clicked "current" in the docs before, it will
> > automatically redirect you. This is more relevant to newer users, and
> > the actual links on google).
> >
> > I do not have the personal expertise to help this situation at all, but
> > I would like to call attention to this active thread for the rust docs
> > repo - https://github.com/rust-lang/docs.rs/issues/1438
> > <https://github.com/rust-lang/docs.rs/issues/1438>. The corresponding
> > site docs.rs <http://docs.rs> has similar issues of always linking to
> > outdated versions, and they're currently in the process of working to
> > improve things. The thread contains a good bit of findings and
> > trial/error. Knowing that PG has similar issues, it seems like there is
> > a possibility of benefiting from mutual lessons learned in improving SEO
> > and linking.
>
> Agree in mutual benefits. This topic has been worked on for decades(!)
> now on the pgsql-www mailing list. For instance, our findings on
> "rel=canonical" are the opposite of what appears in that GitHub thread,
> and matches what some other OSS projects are doing (e.g. Django).
>
> We consider "latest" to be a "superset" of the other versions. We
> explicitly do not want to redirect from old to new, given we support 5
> (and briefly 6) major PostgreSQL versions at any given time and want to
> ensure users have access to older doc versions.
>
> > Again, I have no concrete proposals to make, but wanted to draw
> > attention to the issue and a good thread of ways to improve / possible
> > solutions.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jonathan
>