[Imc-uk-network] [imc-uk-tech] [Imc-london] mirrored content on uk site = less search engine traffic for local sites

[yossarian]

On 02/06/10 20:27, anargeek wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Wed 02-Jun-2010 at 04:53:07PM +0100, yossarian wrote:
>   
>> Your design as it currently stands, containing links from the newswire
>> to content mirrored on the UK site, is very likely to result in all
>> Google searches pointing to the content on the UK site, bypassing the
>> originating site. 
>>     
> You appear to misunderstand what has been done, the links all point to
> the source sites *unless* someone visits the preferences page and then
> uses a select list to set a cookie -- only then will the links point to
> the UK versions of articles. So search engines will only get the links to
> the source articles, so it's not an issue.
>   

Hi Chris,

People still link to articles in all kinds of ways (delicious, google,
blog posts, features, etc) which could result in the same effect
happening.  The Mir site's RSS feeds, which always link to the content
in Mir rather than on the originating site (even on your dev site) are
probably also contributing to the problem. See here:

http://chrisc.dev.indymedia.org.uk/en/newswire.rss

Note that the Irish articles all point at the Mir site.

To see the effects of this, let's take a real-world example.

Given the article "London CAAT at the Fine Art Fair", for which the
original is at:
http://london.indymedia.org/articles/4949

If we do a Google search on the title:

http://www.google.com/search?q=London+CAAT+at+the+Fine+Art+Fair

Google gives back the Indy UK article as the first result, and does not
link to the original article on the London site at all.  The final
product that people end up seeing is:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/06/452964.html

Chris, if you're wondering why local collectives don't want any inbound
links to stuff on the UK site, there are some good reasons:

a) it hurts the search rankings of local sites
b) the content doesn't look anything like what it's supposed to

The solution proposed by JimDog is I think a good one, if I understand
it correctly - if the content is going to be crippled anyway (no photos,
videos, maps, related content, etc) then maybe it makes sense to just
have no content text at all to index and a link to the original?

Ideally I think it'd be better to simply have no URL at on the UK site
at which the content was accessible but if this isn't possible then it
certainly seems like having very little content to index is the right
way to go. 

Chris, I've been trying to follow the discussion, am I right that you're
saying Mir *must* display content for anything linked from the
newswire?  There is no option to insert a link into the newswire from a
feed, but have no inbound links?

Also, is the solution proposed by JimDog technically feasible?

Greets,
Yossarian