I think the analogy is apt. Spam clogs inboxes, worthless blogs clog search engine results.
The difference is in who to blame. Spammers are to blame for clogging up your inbox. If Google choose to search the Internet, and do so poorly, that's their problem (or alternatively, your problem for using poor search terms - I must say, I've never had trouble with useless blogs clogging my results, I'd be curious if people could give some examples?)
I wish there was a meta tag or something that all blogs used indicating that it is in fact a blog, so that search engines could easily filter the results.
Ah yes, we could go back to the bad old days of search engines when we relied on meta tags in the page to tell the search engine what it was about. We all know how well that worked.
(Hint - no one who wants their page to be searched will include the "blog" tag, or they'll just disagree that it should count as a blog - consider how many people insist that Slashdot isn't a blog, even though it can clog search engine results just the same. And those who don't want their page searched can already use the no robots tags.)
Most conversations are between people you don't know, often about something you don't care about, but that hasn't stopped 'talking' from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon.
Just because something is mainly important only to those who know the people involved, doesn't stop it being a useful thing for those people, or have anything to do with how popular the phenomenon should be.
LiveJournal allows threading/replying to other comments. I find it a bit odd that the definition of "blog" should hinge on how advanced the commenting system is - and furthermore, I'd say that if anything, a decent comment system is argument in favour of being a blog, not against (eg, consider the extreme - a webpage with no comments ability at all is something I'd be less likely to consider a "blog").
The effects of using leaches and maggots has presumably been shown in repeated scientific trials. If the same is shown for "spirits", then fine. The problem is that ID has no part which can be scientifically tested, unlike evolution.
There may or may not be holes in current evolutionary theory, but even if there are, this does not mean that some random other idea has any merit.
Why not just present both theories, and allow the students to make their own minds up?
There's only one theory.
If you mean we should present any old idea, then there's more than two. Science lessons would be filled with hundred of teachers each having a chance to present their latest "theory" (eg, "The moon is made of cheese, and is pushed along its orbit by invisible space mice!").
Very few guys are willing to share a girl like that.
Well yes, if we have lots of guys who think they should have several partners, but that these partners should not have other partners in turn, and furthermore, there are plenty of girls happy to go along with this arrangement, and the situation does not happen in reverse, we have a problem. I wouldn't advocate that sort of situation. I'd rather that anyone who is unwilling to "share" should also not expect to have more than one partner themselves. Basically, I was just pointing out the different forms that multiple relationships can take.
The few polyandrous societies involve brothers sharing a woman.
Well I'm not just thinking about societies where this is the norm, but people who practice multiple relationships in our western/developed societes. These almost always take the form where all partners are free to persue other relationships, or alternatively you might get "closed group relationships", but those are many-to-many, not one-to-many. So I don't think that pointing to other societies is evidence that this can't happen, and indeed, I'd feel that how such people behave in our society is more relevant than other societies.
As for diseases, safety issues are obviously a concern, just as they are with serial monogamists (ie, you only guarantee to really improve safety significantly if you stick with one partner for life, but monogamy rarely takes that form in today's society); though note that polygamy/polyamory does not imply promiscuity.
Polygamy can cause some problems because some men will inevitably be without a mate. What do you think they're going to do?
It's not a problem if the women can have multiple partners too. Indeed, it would then be less of a problem than monogamy (where men lose out on potential partners because they are already taken).
there is certainly enough sociological evidence to show the addictive cycle of pornography parallels the addictive cycle of druge usage, all of which leads to criminal behavior.
Perhaps you would care to give us some evidence of this supposed research which shows that viewing porn or using drugs always leads to criminal behaviour? Because it certainly isn't true based on my experience.
So if you are looking for some recent news and you feel a new site such as CNN or BBC is preferable to a random blog, then why not use http://news.google.com/ ?
The main search engine is supposed to be a search of the Internet as a whole, and Google cannot easily guess what the intentions of the user are. For example, someone else may be searching for information which may be more likely to be found say on Slashdot (which Google count as a blog) than a news site.
Admittedly, a ticky box to make it optional might not do any harm, but the user's opinion of what a blog is will likely differ to Google's (not to mention that, as another poster said, this could kill off RSS if "blogs" could be removed from the main search).
Slashdot isn't a blog in that it is a conversation. Think about real life. Having converastion is much more interesting than listening to one person drone on and on and on ad infinitum. Most blogs are like the obnoxious person droning on and on.
Places like LiveJournal are exactly like a conversation, allowing interaction between friends like in real life, but over a larger scale, and they do this job a lot better than Slashdot, in my opinion.
The headline of the article says it all, and I'm glad those blogs people write about themselves are doing something good for SOMEONE. I find personal blogs that just constantly run on with someone's personal life to be the dullest reading.
Well exactly: No one ever claimed that personal blogs were supposed to be interesting to complete strangers; this is just some popular misconception, probably perpetuated by the fact that the word "blog" is used for both personal journals, and websites which are intended to be interesting to a wider audience. People need to understand that "blog" is just a style of technology, no more specific to the usage than words like "website" or "email".
I find the idea that there are all these people going around reading random people's blogs, and then posting on Slashdot saying how crap blogging is, quite amusing. I journal, and read my friends' posts, and have never bothered searching out journals of random strangers.
But you do hear people complaining about all-in-one software programs (eg, browsers with built in email and irc clients), and say they prefer standalone applications dedicated to a specific tasks.
Your analogy is not valid, because you can pick and mix what applications you want on a computer. If there was a portable all-one-device where you could remove the camera, and either do without or maybe replace it with a better one (including with one made by a different manufacturer), then that would be more like it.
Other issues are that running several applications on a computer doesn't suck the battery life; an all-in-one device would be much more viable if the battery lasted several times longer.
Lastly, the claim was but doesnt do any of them well. Clearly, a computer does do its many tasks well, just as good as any standalone terminal which can only do one task. This tends not to be the case with portable devices (consider the cameras in most phones).
Don't get me wrong, it's a handy bonus that my phone can play mp3s, but there is still a case right now for dedicated devices rather than an all-in-one, and your computer analogy is not valid.
And ask yourself exactly why everyone has chosen Firefox over Opera especially considering Opera has been around for 10 years.
But your deluding yourself if you think that this move is going to somehow gain any measureable marketshare for Opera.
But hang on - I'd have said that the main reason that people have chosen Firefox over Opera *is* because of having to put up with ads. It's meant that recommending Opera over Firefox to IE users has been hard, because you have to show how it's better despite the ads - now we don't have to.
Firefox has spready greatly by word of mouth advertising, and I'd say Opera has lost out on this whilst having ads: Before Firefox came along, I was able to recommend Opera. Afterwards, I gave up, because I'd know they'd prefer the ad-free alternative and couldn't be bothered to convince them otherwise. Now, I can recommend Opera again.
How do you explain greater popularity of Firefox (assuming that there is greater popularity)?
Sure, it's great that Firefox is open source, but the mainstream users don't give a damn about that.
I agree that this will not make any difference in terms of attracting people "on the verge of switching". It is important, I feel, for attracting new users.
My guess would be that existing Opera users seem to be mainly those who switched when Firefox wasn't around; since then, it's been hard to persuade people to choose Opera, as there's the inevitable reaction of "but it has ads", leaving us to somehow explain how Opera is still better than Firefox.
But now, when persuading people to switch from IE, Opera can be suggested as a viable choice just as much as Firefox.
As others have said, Opera does better out of the box.
My personal favourite features include saving the opened tabs when you restart, and an "Undo" function which reopens pages you've just closed (works a lot more easier and intuitively than searching through the history).
The former is apparenetly available on Firefox if I download some extension from somewhere, I don't know about the latter. Either way, I'm not about to go hunting around just to duplicate functionality that's standard in Opera.
Now let's turn things around: Can someone please explain to me the advantages of using Firefox over Opera?
One thing I find interesting about Slashdot is how amongst the "niche" products, only some are viewed as "cool". Eg, MacOS and Linux are accepted, but as soon as an article about platforms like BeOS or AmigaOS comes along, it's flooded with a load of "Why should I use this?" or demands of long lists of advantages over other platforms.
And so it is with Opera verus Firefox: always attracts the "Why should I switch / Why don't you use Firefox" comments, despite the fact that is was here as an IE alternative long before Firefox. So let's hear the long list of advantages that Firefox has over every other browser, please?
MacOS X shows that it's still possible to introduce a new OS, and gain market share (and even if you view it as a continuation to the first MacOS, its market share seems to have grown since the "classic" days).
Also, I don't see that you need large market share of all desktop machines in order to be viable - what matters is that you can stay in business, and that the users have products to buy. Is it possible? Amiga and Genesi ( http://www.pegasosppc.com/ ) appear to be staying in business so far, I don't know how much profit they are making from their products however.
Maybe it depends on your personal definition of success...
Yes, but if market share is all that matters, then Microsoft are the only successful ones, and we should all be using Windows.
Yes, but simply because there are professions which use it doesn't mean it has to be taught to everyone. I agree that school has to provide a certain common base, but I don't really think trigonometry belongs in there. A class teaching how to automate common computing tasks would have been more useful to more people, I imagine.
True - part of the problem is that (at least here in the UK, I don't know how the US works) Maths is compulsory (until 16), along with English and Science. With optional subjects, you can presume people taking them may want to work in those areas, so it is important to teach accordingly.
With compulsory subjects, I agree that the compulsory bits should be only those which everyone needs in everyday life. In maths, I'd say that things like understanding statistics are more important than trigonometry (consider how often statistics are given in the news and so on, and how many people misunderstand them).
So ideally you'd have "core maths/english/science" then a separate set of classes instead for those who choose to take all of that subject.
But here's the problem: I suspect that most schools won't have the resources to teach two sets of those subjects; it may be simpler just to do things as they are now. (Plus as someone else points out, you may not know what you want to do when you are 14 - or they may not realise just how many jobs may require an application of maths - so it's good to teach it anyway)
or the fact that most of the entries can be altered by anybody at any time, regardless of their qualifications or competence
Although note that this problem is not unique to pages that can be edited by anyone. A webpage or even a book cannot be assumed to be authoritative, unless possibly if you can show that the person who wrote it is an expert in that field.
I dislike the way that many accept anything written down, even on the Internet in some cases, to be the truth, but Wikipedia is made an exception "because anyone can edit it". If anything, Wikipedia has an advantage: it's very difficult to put in any bias or outright lies if anyone else can edit them out, but it's a lot easier to do so if you're writing your own book.
Another important point is that Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, is not a primary source. It's intent is to collect objective facts, and not to be a source of original research (in fact I believe the latter is specifically disallowed).
Whilst an encylopedia may be a useful way to quickly check or learn some facts, ultimately if you want to prove something, you need to go to original sources and research. "It must be true because I read it in this encyclopedia" does not hold whether or not we're talking about Wikipedia.
I don't think it's that crazy - I think it's reasonable to have protections against people maliciously revealing private information such that it damages a person's reputation or business (it has to be shown that damage is caused - so it's not that revealing "embarrassing" information is inherently libel).
Admittedly this might better be called something other than libel, but that's just a matter of definitions.
Also, if you can make a search engine that is all for blog content, you can absolutely remove that content from the main search engine (since you've already identified it as blog stuff).
And how do Google count something as a "blog"?
By whether it has a feed. Since clearly, not all websites with feeds are diaries, and also not all diaries necessarily have feeds, removing the "blogs" will not achieve what you are after.
Slashdot is included in Blog Search - do you consider Slashdot to be empty of any information?
Google most certainly has not managed to create a search engine which can identify personal diary type blogs; people are just jumping to conclusions based on their interpretation of the word "blog".
: Why would you want to discount search results just because they happen to be on blogs?
For the same reason I don't read through everyone's diaries when I'm looking for reference books at the library.
Sure, but the problem is that short of some nifty AI, there's no way for Google to filter out the diaries.
At the moment, any kind of "don't include blogs" option is going to discount non-diary results that might be useful to what you are searching for, and still include lots of pointless forum-type posts from places that didn't get categorised as a "blog".
If you want "reference books" without the clutter of the rest of the Internet, perhaps a site like Wikipedia might be a better start than Google.
An AC has already said this, but just to reiterate - it's ignoring the "Block robots/spiders" option on Livejournal accounts.
I've noticed this too. Strangely, my LJ and other people's I've checked seem to be excluded, but recently a friend pointed out that hers is listed by Google, and it's unclear what the difference is.
And non-blogs aren't personal opinions, and are objective and factually accurate?
What is Google anyway, if not a search of "the masses".
It seems like you want some magical ticky box "Don't include personal opinions"...
If I'm looking for some specific documentation under Jakarta Commons, a google search will find it quite quickly. If I also have to pore through blog results
If irrelevant blog posts come up higher in the rankings than an official page, then Google's search algorithm needs improving.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the analogy is apt. Spam clogs inboxes, worthless blogs clog search engine results.
The difference is in who to blame. Spammers are to blame for clogging up your inbox. If Google choose to search the Internet, and do so poorly, that's their problem (or alternatively, your problem for using poor search terms - I must say, I've never had trouble with useless blogs clogging my results, I'd be curious if people could give some examples?)
I wish there was a meta tag or something that all blogs used indicating that it is in fact a blog, so that search engines could easily filter the results.
Ah yes, we could go back to the bad old days of search engines when we relied on meta tags in the page to tell the search engine what it was about. We all know how well that worked.
(Hint - no one who wants their page to be searched will include the "blog" tag, or they'll just disagree that it should count as a blog - consider how many people insist that Slashdot isn't a blog, even though it can clog search engine results just the same. And those who don't want their page searched can already use the no robots tags.)
The question is, does anyone care about some anonymous coward ranting on Slashdot?
Most conversations are between people you don't know, often about something you don't care about, but that hasn't stopped 'talking' from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon.
Just because something is mainly important only to those who know the people involved, doesn't stop it being a useful thing for those people, or have anything to do with how popular the phenomenon should be.
LiveJournal allows threading/replying to other comments. I find it a bit odd that the definition of "blog" should hinge on how advanced the commenting system is - and furthermore, I'd say that if anything, a decent comment system is argument in favour of being a blog, not against (eg, consider the extreme - a webpage with no comments ability at all is something I'd be less likely to consider a "blog").
The effects of using leaches and maggots has presumably been shown in repeated scientific trials. If the same is shown for "spirits", then fine. The problem is that ID has no part which can be scientifically tested, unlike evolution.
There may or may not be holes in current evolutionary theory, but even if there are, this does not mean that some random other idea has any merit.
Why not just present both theories, and allow the students to make their own minds up?
There's only one theory.
If you mean we should present any old idea, then there's more than two. Science lessons would be filled with hundred of teachers each having a chance to present their latest "theory" (eg, "The moon is made of cheese, and is pushed along its orbit by invisible space mice!").
Very few guys are willing to share a girl like that.
Well yes, if we have lots of guys who think they should have several partners, but that these partners should not have other partners in turn, and furthermore, there are plenty of girls happy to go along with this arrangement, and the situation does not happen in reverse, we have a problem. I wouldn't advocate that sort of situation. I'd rather that anyone who is unwilling to "share" should also not expect to have more than one partner themselves. Basically, I was just pointing out the different forms that multiple relationships can take.
The few polyandrous societies involve brothers sharing a woman.
Well I'm not just thinking about societies where this is the norm, but people who practice multiple relationships in our western/developed societes. These almost always take the form where all partners are free to persue other relationships, or alternatively you might get "closed group relationships", but those are many-to-many, not one-to-many. So I don't think that pointing to other societies is evidence that this can't happen, and indeed, I'd feel that how such people behave in our society is more relevant than other societies.
As for diseases, safety issues are obviously a concern, just as they are with serial monogamists (ie, you only guarantee to really improve safety significantly if you stick with one partner for life, but monogamy rarely takes that form in today's society); though note that polygamy/polyamory does not imply promiscuity.
Polygamy can cause some problems because some men will inevitably be without a mate. What do you think they're going to do?
It's not a problem if the women can have multiple partners too. Indeed, it would then be less of a problem than monogamy (where men lose out on potential partners because they are already taken).
there is certainly enough sociological evidence to show the addictive cycle of pornography parallels the addictive cycle of druge usage, all of which leads to criminal behavior.
Perhaps you would care to give us some evidence of this supposed research which shows that viewing porn or using drugs always leads to criminal behaviour? Because it certainly isn't true based on my experience.
So if you are looking for some recent news and you feel a new site such as CNN or BBC is preferable to a random blog, then why not use http://news.google.com/ ?
The main search engine is supposed to be a search of the Internet as a whole, and Google cannot easily guess what the intentions of the user are. For example, someone else may be searching for information which may be more likely to be found say on Slashdot (which Google count as a blog) than a news site.
Admittedly, a ticky box to make it optional might not do any harm, but the user's opinion of what a blog is will likely differ to Google's (not to mention that, as another poster said, this could kill off RSS if "blogs" could be removed from the main search).
Slashdot isn't a blog in that it is a conversation. Think about real life. Having converastion is much more interesting than listening to one person drone on and on and on ad infinitum. Most blogs are like the obnoxious person droning on and on.
Places like LiveJournal are exactly like a conversation, allowing interaction between friends like in real life, but over a larger scale, and they do this job a lot better than Slashdot, in my opinion.
The headline of the article says it all, and I'm glad those blogs people write about themselves are doing something good for SOMEONE. I find personal blogs that just constantly run on with someone's personal life to be the dullest reading.
Well exactly: No one ever claimed that personal blogs were supposed to be interesting to complete strangers; this is just some popular misconception, probably perpetuated by the fact that the word "blog" is used for both personal journals, and websites which are intended to be interesting to a wider audience. People need to understand that "blog" is just a style of technology, no more specific to the usage than words like "website" or "email".
I find the idea that there are all these people going around reading random people's blogs, and then posting on Slashdot saying how crap blogging is, quite amusing. I journal, and read my friends' posts, and have never bothered searching out journals of random strangers.
But you do hear people complaining about all-in-one software programs (eg, browsers with built in email and irc clients), and say they prefer standalone applications dedicated to a specific tasks.
Your analogy is not valid, because you can pick and mix what applications you want on a computer. If there was a portable all-one-device where you could remove the camera, and either do without or maybe replace it with a better one (including with one made by a different manufacturer), then that would be more like it.
Other issues are that running several applications on a computer doesn't suck the battery life; an all-in-one device would be much more viable if the battery lasted several times longer.
Lastly, the claim was but doesnt do any of them well. Clearly, a computer does do its many tasks well, just as good as any standalone terminal which can only do one task. This tends not to be the case with portable devices (consider the cameras in most phones).
Don't get me wrong, it's a handy bonus that my phone can play mp3s, but there is still a case right now for dedicated devices rather than an all-in-one, and your computer analogy is not valid.
And ask yourself exactly why everyone has chosen Firefox over Opera especially considering Opera has been around for 10 years.
But your deluding yourself if you think that this move is going to somehow gain any measureable marketshare for Opera.
But hang on - I'd have said that the main reason that people have chosen Firefox over Opera *is* because of having to put up with ads. It's meant that recommending Opera over Firefox to IE users has been hard, because you have to show how it's better despite the ads - now we don't have to.
Firefox has spready greatly by word of mouth advertising, and I'd say Opera has lost out on this whilst having ads: Before Firefox came along, I was able to recommend Opera. Afterwards, I gave up, because I'd know they'd prefer the ad-free alternative and couldn't be bothered to convince them otherwise. Now, I can recommend Opera again.
How do you explain greater popularity of Firefox (assuming that there is greater popularity)?
Sure, it's great that Firefox is open source, but the mainstream users don't give a damn about that.
I agree that this will not make any difference in terms of attracting people "on the verge of switching". It is important, I feel, for attracting new users.
My guess would be that existing Opera users seem to be mainly those who switched when Firefox wasn't around; since then, it's been hard to persuade people to choose Opera, as there's the inevitable reaction of "but it has ads", leaving us to somehow explain how Opera is still better than Firefox.
But now, when persuading people to switch from IE, Opera can be suggested as a viable choice just as much as Firefox.
As others have said, Opera does better out of the box.
My personal favourite features include saving the opened tabs when you restart, and an "Undo" function which reopens pages you've just closed (works a lot more easier and intuitively than searching through the history).
The former is apparenetly available on Firefox if I download some extension from somewhere, I don't know about the latter. Either way, I'm not about to go hunting around just to duplicate functionality that's standard in Opera.
Now let's turn things around: Can someone please explain to me the advantages of using Firefox over Opera?
One thing I find interesting about Slashdot is how amongst the "niche" products, only some are viewed as "cool". Eg, MacOS and Linux are accepted, but as soon as an article about platforms like BeOS or AmigaOS comes along, it's flooded with a load of "Why should I use this?" or demands of long lists of advantages over other platforms.
And so it is with Opera verus Firefox: always attracts the "Why should I switch / Why don't you use Firefox" comments, despite the fact that is was here as an IE alternative long before Firefox. So let's hear the long list of advantages that Firefox has over every other browser, please?
MacOS X shows that it's still possible to introduce a new OS, and gain market share (and even if you view it as a continuation to the first MacOS, its market share seems to have grown since the "classic" days).
Also, I don't see that you need large market share of all desktop machines in order to be viable - what matters is that you can stay in business, and that the users have products to buy. Is it possible? Amiga and Genesi ( http://www.pegasosppc.com/ ) appear to be staying in business so far, I don't know how much profit they are making from their products however.
Maybe it depends on your personal definition of success...
Yes, but if market share is all that matters, then Microsoft are the only successful ones, and we should all be using Windows.
Yes, but simply because there are professions which use it doesn't mean it has to be taught to everyone. I agree that school has to provide a certain common base, but I don't really think trigonometry belongs in there. A class teaching how to automate common computing tasks would have been more useful to more people, I imagine.
True - part of the problem is that (at least here in the UK, I don't know how the US works) Maths is compulsory (until 16), along with English and Science. With optional subjects, you can presume people taking them may want to work in those areas, so it is important to teach accordingly.
With compulsory subjects, I agree that the compulsory bits should be only those which everyone needs in everyday life. In maths, I'd say that things like understanding statistics are more important than trigonometry (consider how often statistics are given in the news and so on, and how many people misunderstand them).
So ideally you'd have "core maths/english/science" then a separate set of classes instead for those who choose to take all of that subject.
But here's the problem: I suspect that most schools won't have the resources to teach two sets of those subjects; it may be simpler just to do things as they are now. (Plus as someone else points out, you may not know what you want to do when you are 14 - or they may not realise just how many jobs may require an application of maths - so it's good to teach it anyway)
or the fact that most of the entries can be altered by anybody at any time, regardless of their qualifications or competence
Although note that this problem is not unique to pages that can be edited by anyone. A webpage or even a book cannot be assumed to be authoritative, unless possibly if you can show that the person who wrote it is an expert in that field.
I dislike the way that many accept anything written down, even on the Internet in some cases, to be the truth, but Wikipedia is made an exception "because anyone can edit it". If anything, Wikipedia has an advantage: it's very difficult to put in any bias or outright lies if anyone else can edit them out, but it's a lot easier to do so if you're writing your own book.
Another important point is that Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, is not a primary source. It's intent is to collect objective facts, and not to be a source of original research (in fact I believe the latter is specifically disallowed).
Whilst an encylopedia may be a useful way to quickly check or learn some facts, ultimately if you want to prove something, you need to go to original sources and research. "It must be true because I read it in this encyclopedia" does not hold whether or not we're talking about Wikipedia.
I don't think it's that crazy - I think it's reasonable to have protections against people maliciously revealing private information such that it damages a person's reputation or business (it has to be shown that damage is caused - so it's not that revealing "embarrassing" information is inherently libel).
Admittedly this might better be called something other than libel, but that's just a matter of definitions.
Also, if you can make a search engine that is all for blog content, you can absolutely remove that content from the main search engine (since you've already identified it as blog stuff).
And how do Google count something as a "blog"?
By whether it has a feed. Since clearly, not all websites with feeds are diaries, and also not all diaries necessarily have feeds, removing the "blogs" will not achieve what you are after.
Slashdot is included in Blog Search - do you consider Slashdot to be empty of any information?
Google most certainly has not managed to create a search engine which can identify personal diary type blogs; people are just jumping to conclusions based on their interpretation of the word "blog".
: Why would you want to discount search results just because they happen to be on blogs?
For the same reason I don't read through everyone's diaries when I'm looking for reference books at the library.
Sure, but the problem is that short of some nifty AI, there's no way for Google to filter out the diaries.
At the moment, any kind of "don't include blogs" option is going to discount non-diary results that might be useful to what you are searching for, and still include lots of pointless forum-type posts from places that didn't get categorised as a "blog".
If you want "reference books" without the clutter of the rest of the Internet, perhaps a site like Wikipedia might be a better start than Google.
Umm, if you want sites to be *protected* you have to do more than just remove obvious links to them.
.htaccess), although the latter may be difficult on LiveJournal...
You know. Remove the content or put it behind a password (e.g.
I imagine that by "Protected", he meant "put behind a password" - which is trivial to do on LiveJournal.
An AC has already said this, but just to reiterate - it's ignoring the "Block robots/spiders" option on Livejournal accounts.
I've noticed this too. Strangely, my LJ and other people's I've checked seem to be excluded, but recently a friend pointed out that hers is listed by Google, and it's unclear what the difference is.
Because blogs are personal opinions, usually
And non-blogs aren't personal opinions, and are objective and factually accurate?
What is Google anyway, if not a search of "the masses".
It seems like you want some magical ticky box "Don't include personal opinions"...
If I'm looking for some specific documentation under Jakarta Commons, a google search will find it quite quickly. If I also have to pore through blog results
If irrelevant blog posts come up higher in the rankings than an official page, then Google's search algorithm needs improving.