Sitemap.xml

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 14:18:16 +0100 last edited: Sat, 19 Jan 2019 14:18:50 +0100

!Hubzilla Support Forum After getting help here finding the rss feeds for the channels, the next thing comes to mind: Sitemaps.

Is there a sitemap being generated to submit to search engines? Or a plugin that does that?

I just noticed that a lot of federated social media is very badly spidered - looking at you, pluspora.com :)

show all 16 comments

hEARt PhoniX

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 18:58:15 +0100

Not that I were aware of such a thing. Would make it a channel based addon at max, as I cannot see something like that makes sense for everyone. All Zotlabs|* tools have been built around privacy first, which does not really conform to out of the box SEO.
If it could be channel based, well, your decision. I can see valid use cases for sure.

Olaf Wendt (Hz)

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 19:21:49 +0100

There's a plugin made by Microsoft *) , updated around 2013(?) but Apache-licensed / open source:

https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/bing-sitemap-plugin-beta-f50bebf5 for comprehensive infos
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39060 for less infos and direct download

It adheres to sitemap xml standards and is claimed to be compliant with not only Bing but other search engines as well. "Selling" point to me are the traffic-reducing delta-sitemap (changed status), an automatic priority calculation and high configurability.

*) sorry, thin ice, I know. But if one wants to be found by Google we've already crossed that line

M. Dent

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:00:44 +0100

I think SEO tools like this will become more important for the project to consider in the future. In my mind, there are a few steps to deal with before that happens - one of them is the ability to attach a domain name to a channel in some way. We may not like it, but for the forseeable future, having a custom domain name on an official web page is going to be seen as a must-have for any serious hosting functionality to be a relevant contender. Once that occurs, I definitely see the benefit for Sitemap capability for things like Articles, WebPages, and even Wiki's. Obviously - sitemap for the user "stream" doesn't really make sense - but Hubzilla is more than the stream -- -MUCH MUCH more. And those other aspects are hopefully soon to get some very very much needed attention!

hEARt PhoniX

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:45:19 +0100

@M. Dent

attach a domain name to a channel in some way

Yes!
And the rest of your post sounds very valid too. And without really mentioning it I slightly aluded to that SEO makes sense for some parts, others not so much. As well as for some people, for others not so much.
But for a publishing platform the ability for SEO'ing is essential.

kris

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 22:51:26 +0100

I did a research of SEO with Hubzilla that could be usefull if you use hubzilla as a blog. But hubzilla is primarly a private communication tool and nothing or almost nothing has been done. If you check on a search engine site:yourhub you will see that you will have few channel page but no posts.

I did imagine in the past the title has to go in the metatitle and the begining has to go to metadescription but public post is not eaten by search engine or very badly

And I imagine the profile page could be findable too. If the profile is public of course.

Blechpirat

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 23:49:53 +0100

Thanks for all the input!

I agree with @M. Dent : There are quite a lot of usecases where you want your content to be found - wiki and webpages come to mind, but a Stream can be a blog or a forum, and you want that content found, at least usually.
As far as I can tell there are as of now neither a robots.txt nor a sitemap - and both should be there, with a useful default setting and configured by the privacy-settings.

M. Dent

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 23:54:10 +0100 last edited: Sat, 19 Jan 2019 23:55:10 +0100

But hubzilla is primarly a private communication tool

That is certainly what many (most?) use it for. But that is not what it "is". In fact, the "personal communication" aspects are merely an artifact and a logical and simple use case for what Hubzilla actually IS. Yes that is what has received the greatest attention - in hopes that prominence in that space would lead to development of other aspects. But it is a huge misunderstanding of the technology to consider Hubzilla a personal messaging tool.

My personal hope in the coming months is to make that patently clear and obvious. You are CLOSER saying that it is a community communications platform, but that would still not do justice to the platform.

Waitman Gobble

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 04:46:51 +0100 last edited: Sun, 20 Jan 2019 05:01:52 +0100

SEO pretty much died like 10 years ago. There are still some 'professionals' running the con. I think most of the time these people live in huts with dirt floors. There are people who believe in hocus pocus.

If there is isolated content that has no inbound links and you feel you must alert the robots of its existance, you would be better off making inbound links to the content. A sitemap xml file has marginal, if any, value. The true utility of a sitemap xml file is to identify page errors, because big G is sick and tired of 40x and 50x status codes in the response.

Stefan Holzhauer

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 10:47:15 +0100

SEO-Voodoo may have died, the claims of self-proclaimed "SEO-experts" selling their snake oil were indeed mostly bullshit.
The practice to actively inform search engines about new content way before they spider it themselves is still a useful practise and something else completely. I would not call that SEO, but SEI (search engine information).

Tobias Wolter

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 10:52:45 +0100

I know living and breathing SEO people able to afford rent in cities, it's not that dead as you may think it is. The hype, as you may call it, has just died down, but they've gone past "KEYWORDS IN PAGES!" stuff.

Stefan Holzhauer

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 11:11:28 +0100

I do know them too, but those are not the ones selling snake oil.

❦ CRIME LICH ❦

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 15:19:26 +0100

banks and various other sites meant to interface with services are frequently web searchable while featuring private communication, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Waitman Gobble

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 15:36:23 +0100

I agree with those who believe that the mere presence of keyword meta tags increases the spam score of the site by 5 points. :)

'keywords will increase your page rank'. Um, where does it mention keywords in the published PR algorithm? Actually i don't even see anything about content mentioned.

Blechpirat

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 15:38:24 +0100

@Waitman Gobble That's kind of off-topic. I wasn't asking for keywords, but a sitemap.xml. And that won't increase spam, but tell the search engine what urls I want to see indexed.

Waitman Gobble

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 15:43:26 +0100

I was replying to the person who brought up keywords, so complain to that person I guess?

Blechpirat

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 15:47:30 +0100

I wasn't intending to complain, sorry if I hurt any feelings. I just tried to bring the discussion back to the topic sitemap.xml and maybe robots.txt.