alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: Why isn't Google indexing information about the AT Protocol?
I've been observing this for a while, where very basic queries about atproto stuff doesn't show up. But yesterday I found a query that makes it VERY obvious: "list of public atproto relays". Here's DuckDuckGo:
1. https://firehose.directory
2. https://atproto.at/relays
3. https://atproto.wiki/en/wiki/reference/core-architecture/relay
4. https://pulsar.feeds.blue
5. https://leaflet.pub/12022731-ae4f-4a13-9f7a-5738b7a83c2e
Of those results, Google only has 3, the only one on the list that... doesn't have a list of public atproto relays. None of the other sites are present anywhere. Trying not to assume malice instead of incompetence here, but it's really ironic that one of the ecosystems with the strongest ties to the open web, with users creating dozens of new websites every week, isn't getting indexed.
Comments
Google search has generally rotted. Can't get promoted for maintenance.
Can confirm that I can also reproduce this. Interesting.
I got 2300 results. DuckDuckGo Uses google. Google is very personalised. They use many dirty tricks to give personalised results. Use another box and check the results again.
https://firehose.directory/robots.txt isn't one, but comes up in Google despite that.
https://atproto.at/robots.txt is good and findable with a direct search
https://atproto.wiki/robots.txt is empty but findable on Google.
https://pulsar.feeds.blue/robots.txt is 404 and thus not indexed by Google.
https://leaflet.pub/robots.txt is good. A logged in google search for this finds this for me.
Tell the people at https://pulsar.feeds.blue to fix their robots.txt if they want to get indexed.
Use incognito/private browsing mode to get a genuine sense of whether something isn’t in the index or whether google decides that even though you’re asking for it you probably don’t want it.
Maybe they should have used a name that wasn't already taken...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_AT_command_set