Hi Magnus, Agreed - maybe canonical isn't the best way to fix it.
It would be nice in general if: - "postgres select syntax" could take you to the default current version of the documentation - 'postrgres 9.4 select syntax" could take you to the specified alternative version This will take an expert on SEO, but from what I see on the MySql website (which achieves the above): - Root link into the current documentation set is much more prominent than the alternate versions - Page title has <product - version number> as a single phrase - There is a 302 redirect when following the unversioned link from google - h1 and h2 tags are not used on their documentation pages All that is just observation on my part, so I hope there is someone that can advise more conclusively. Cheers, Conor On Fri, Jul 14, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Magnus Hagander <mag...@hagander.net> wrote: > > > On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 11:04 PM, Conor McNally <theco...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> There was a suggestion a few years ago on this forum about adding a >> canonical url to the documentation set: >> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/04E4F5A6-6526-4DDC-A9E >> 5-2991E3B2ED83%40cantoute.com >> >> Was there a reason for not doing this? At the moment it can be pretty >> annoying googling something like "postgres select syntax", and getting a >> pretty random selection of duplicate pages, none of which matches the >> current version of Postgres. Even google for "postgres 9.6 select syntax" >> still doesn't return the correct version for me. >> > > Yes, and the reason being that the docs aren't actually duplicates. > > Something like "postgres 9.6 select syntax" *should* work. But more > importantly, if we make it the canonical URL, then it will be impossible to > search for old versions at all, will it not? > > > > In contrast, other documentation sites such as MySql, CouchDb, Python, >> Django, etc. all behave much better in search engine results. For CouchDb >> and Django you can see use of the canonical tag on the documentation >> pages. For the others they must be doing something different, but still >> they've managed to direct Google to the single, current version of the >> correct page. >> > > Yeah, I'm a frequent user of the django docs at least, and it's absolutely > horrible. Since I'm not using the very latest version, then *every* time I > search for docs I get sent to the wrong version. So I've got basically 100% > failure rate with the django docs, vs maybe a 50-60% failure rate with the > postgres docs. > > > >> I'm just wondering if something has looked into this already, or if >> canonical url is something that could be tested for the postgres >> documentation? >> > > The problem with testing it is that I assume its' destructive testing. > Once we've tested it, it's very hard to go back. > > > >> Here is some information from google: >> https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html >> >> The goal for me would be to make the documentation for the current >> version of Postgres rise to the top of search engine results, and to remove >> the random results for older versions. >> >> What do you think? >> > > If we can find an actual statement from somebody who *knows* (and nto just > speculates like most of us do) how it works.. In particular, will a search > for older versions still work or will that force *everybody* to the current > version? > > Things do seem to get worse by the day. I guess we're eventually > approaching the point where all version specific queries *already* fail. > We're not there yet, but we seem to be closer than we've ever been before.. > > -- > Magnus Hagander > Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/> > Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/> >
