Hi Michael, That seems incredibly arbitrary when a robots.txt is purely optional - especially as the default spider behavior is to index all unless told otherwise. So you're penalizing people by having your robot behave in the opposite manner? And regarding PICS labels, most people don't know how to set them or don't have the requisite server access. How do you justify these?
Cheers, John -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike at Green-Beast.com Sent: Monday, 10 March 2008 12:52 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] SEO, fact or fiction and myths >> I didn't know robots text >> was important for accessibility, however I learned from the >> accessites team that it is. Tee, The reasons we (Accessites) look for a robots.txt file is because it keeps honest bots from wasting their time and your bandwidth indexing directories/files you don't want indexed. We don't look at this as part of a web accessibility requirement. Our focus is on quality sites for which accessibility must be an integral part. Thus, we like to see things like a robots.txt file, PICS label, semantics, good looks, and more, of course. Regarding a site map, that we like to see for accessibility and not for bots at all. A site map is important to accessibility as some user will seek out a site map right away to grasp a site's overview and offerings. For some users, this is the best way to begin the exploration of a site. In my opinion, html site maps don't have anything to do with indexing other than just being another indexable page. It is my understanding, though, that an XML site map can help indexing but being that I've never used one or looked into it much, I can neither confirm or deny this. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Respectfully, Mike Cherim ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
