Bloggers Buzz

Bloglines has via their blog updated on their proposal to keep designated RSS feeds out of various search and aggregator indexes which works like this:

This issue bloggers and publishers are facing is similar to the issue robots.txt addressed. Sites that don’t want to be publicized or easily accessible to the masses use robots.txt to tell search engines not to crawl or index their pages without having to set up password authentication systems that would overly restrict their visitor community. By most accounts, the robots.txt standard has been largely successful in doing just that.

Our proposal for a Feed Access Control Standard is about creating a robots.txt-like standard for feeds. Bloggers and publishers who don’t want their feeds to be publicized will be able to tell search engines, aggregators and other feed crawlers to exclude their feed from listings, directories and search engine indexes.

We recognize that this proposed standard explicitly does not address republication. But just as robots.txt has done, it will act as a sign post to a search engine or an aggregator that a particular feed’s content (the content in the feed itself, not just on the page that is linked to from the feed) should not be indexed. Like a stop sign, the value is in making everyone aware of the rules of the road. As with any rule of the road, it relies on the community to adhere to it to prevent “accidents.”

Tags: bloglines, feeds, rss, syndication, feed readers, rss readers