Hello
Viewing the logs of applications I wrote, I noticed that a considerable
number of requests are from robots following links of types such as "Add
to shopping cart" or "Remember this item" - links that typically point
to the same page they are clicked on, with some GET variable that
triggers an action on the server.
Trying to find a solution to tell robots not to follow these links, I
came across microformat Robots Exclusion Profile
http://microformats.org/wiki/robots-exclusion and the @rel=nofollow
attribute. While the latter does not look robot-specific to me (it
actually states that the author wants to discourage from following the
link), I must admit that I don't fully understand the Robots Exclusion
Profile approach. If this approach is serving the purpose, please feel
free to ignore this proposal. It might then be helpful to add some hint
on this somewhere in 4.12 of the HTML spec.
I propose to add either a new attribute, or a new link type, or a
keyword for @rel, whichever is most consistent in the HTML structure:
<a href="page.html?add-item=1" robots-nofollow>Add to cart</a>
<a href="page.html?add-item=1" rel="robots-nofollow">Add to cart</a>
<a href="page.html?add-item=1" type="robots-nofollow">Add to cart</a>
--
Markus
