I use Yahoo search. No problem if it would be blocked though.
Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
31–40 of 98 posts
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#32This poll is mixing the two issues of allowing Yahoo/MSN search, and constraining News.YC growth.
If the main aim is to constrain growth, wouldn't it make more sense to block popular Google, and allow a less-used engine for utility search?
I got the impression a few weeks ago (from this comment -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=146623) that you were OK with inlink-driven growth; has something changed?
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#33I agree to the site being invisible to yahoo, msn, ask, etc. At the same time, please let the newer/upcoming search engines crawl the site, else, google would become IE circa 2000-2004 and there would be very little innovation in search. my 2 cents.
This patchwork deny/allow is nearly as bad as banning everyone but Google. Every small site will make the decision of who's young enough to deserve a chance differently -- making only Google the safe choice for searching.
A principle of equal access by any well-behaved search engine is the only policy which supports startups and diversity. The market already has a winner-take-all quality; why make it even worse for competition?
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#34How many people actually come from Yahoo and MSN searches? I would guess that the publicity news.yc would receive from this action on the tech blogs would send more people here than simply allowing those spiders to continue indexing. Otherwise, I'm all for blocking them.
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#35I'm all in favor of constraining growth.
And, I'd say that if there was a way to ban Google search, but have a decent way to search HN, then I'd say ban Google, too. But at very least I think that Yahoo and MSN search could be banned.
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#36I voted to remain visible.
I assume that resource is not a problem for YC. This fact, coupled with YC not having a search feature, leads me to believe that it's better for YC community that this site is indexed by more than just one search engine.
One big reason, as pointed out by Tichy, is that not all of us use Google as our primary search engine. By cutting off Yahoo, MSN, etc, but not Google, you would essentially be forcing us to use it to search the content of this site. Do that and you could be going down a slippery slope.
And I agree with the "ban all or ban none" mentality.
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#37Hacker news should remain invisible to the crawlers.
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#38Allow all or ban all. let's make fairness a rule on the internet, it gives a chance to all startup to emerge by giants side. If Yahoo was not fair to Google no one knows what would have happened.
That statement is roughly equivalent to "imprison no one or imprison everyone".
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#39why not block all search engines?
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+y... There's no other search.
Does that actually work for people? I've tried using Google to search News.YC for an older topic on a couple of occasions, and the results have been very hit-or-miss. Is it just me?
Re: Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?
#40lets block all search traffic and then take this even further -- lets have all incoming links get forwarded to a dummy hacker news with nothing but lame stuff so that anyone trying to access the site from a blog or something with an HTTP_REFERER will get redirected to the lame site. that'll definitely keep out the unwashed masses.
:)