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Opened 5 years ago

Closed 5 years ago

#51274 closed defect (bug) (fixed)

Inaccurate string - discouraging search engines does not prevent them from crawling your site.

Reported by: carike's profile carike Owned by: garrett-eclipse's profile garrett-eclipse
Milestone: 5.6 Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version: 3.0
Component: Help/About Keywords: has-patch has-screenshots has-copy-review commit
Focuses: ui, administration, privacy, ui-copy Cc:

Description

I noticed the following string while reviewing the fuzzy strings for 5.5.
I am not entirely sure where it comes from.

When this setting is in effect, a reminder is shown in the 
At a Glance box of the Dashboard that says, 
“Search engines discouraged,” 
to remind you that your site is not being crawled.

This creates the impression that the site won't be crawled, which is not the case.
We could use something like this instead:

When this setting is in effect, a reminder is shown
in the At a Glance box of the Dashboard that says, 
“Search engines discouraged,” 
to remind you that you have instructed search engines to not crawl your site. 
It is important to note that search engines can (and some do!) 
disobey this directive, although most reputable search engines 
will adhere to the instruction.

I realize that this is longer, we should make sure that we don't misinform people about their risk profiles, or inadvertently spread misinformation.

Attachments (4)

51274.diff (1.8 KB) - added by garrett-eclipse 5 years ago.
Initial patch to update verbiage on Help Text.
Screen Shot 2020-09-17 at 7.31.51 AM.png (425.5 KB) - added by garrett-eclipse 5 years ago.
Updated Help Text
Screen Shot 2020-09-17 at 7.38.17 AM.png (436.5 KB) - added by garrett-eclipse 5 years ago.
Before Changes
Screen Shot 2020-10-16 at 5.48.08 PM.png (347.7 KB) - added by hellofromTonya 5 years ago.
51274 after applying patch

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (11)

#1 @SergeyBiryukov
5 years ago

  • Component changed from Administration to Help/About
  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to 5.6

Just noting this string is from the help text on Reading Settings screen, and was originally introduced in [15000].

@garrett-eclipse
5 years ago

Initial patch to update verbiage on Help Text.

#2 @garrett-eclipse
5 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch has-screenshots needs-copy-review needs-testing added
  • Owner set to garrett-eclipse
  • Status changed from new to accepted
  • Version set to 3.0

Thanks @carike good point I've uploaded an initial patch in 51274.diff and provided a screen of after and also provided a before for reference.

Prior to the mentioned string there was some existing verbiage as well so I updated the block to incorporate your recommendation.

I did avoid mention of reputation as while crawling nefariously is a thing and definitely frowned upon, there as still valid reasons for crawling sites with this checked such as SEO tools admins use to run reports on their website which is often on a dev install prior to launch.

Below is the verbiage I used;

You can choose whether or not your site will be crawled by robots, ping services, and spiders. If you want those services to ignore your site, click the checkbox next to “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” and click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.

Note that even when set to discourage search engines your site is still visible on the web and not all search engines adhere to this directive.

When this setting is in effect, a reminder is shown in the At a Glance box of the Dashboard that says, “Search engines discouraged,” to remind you that you have directed search engines to not crawl your site.

Thoughts/Feedback/Testing always welcome.

#3 @carike
5 years ago

  • Keywords needs-copy-review removed

+1 for the copy :)

#4 @garrett-eclipse
5 years ago

  • Keywords has-copy-review added

@hellofromTonya
5 years ago

51274 after applying patch

#5 @hellofromTonya
5 years ago

  • Keywords needs-testing removed

#6 @garrett-eclipse
5 years ago

  • Keywords commit added

Thanks @hellofromTonya for taking the time to test there, I think we're good to go here for committers review.

#7 @SergeyBiryukov
5 years ago

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from accepted to closed

In 49287:

Help/About: Clarify that discouraging search engines does not prevent them from crawling the site.

Props carike, garrett-eclipse, hellofromTonya.
Fixes #51274.

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