> This topic has been worked on for decades(!) now on the pgsql-www mailing list
I thought I opened a new thread on what I thought was a newish topic, but I guess it turns out I was just searching the wrong mailing list. Thanks for the insights, I’ll consider this closed :) On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 18:18 Jonathan S. Katz <jk...@postgresql.org> wrote: > On 7/25/22 6:08 PM, Trevor Gross wrote: > > Hey all, > > > > I think the PG community is pretty aware that there are some issues with > > search engines taking users to the right versions of the docs. You > > google something simple like "postgres drop column" and the first > > postgresql.org <http://postgresql.org> result takes you to the v7.4 > docs > > - EOL over a decade ago. It's a similar story for many searches, lots of > > results take you to v8 or v9 docs first. > > One of the efforts this year to improve it has already yielded results, > where much more significant search traffic going to the latest docs > (stats here): > > > https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/25aa516b-4fa7-5083-366e-09cf4f838...@postgresql.org > > The 7.4 page does include the canonical link, but perhaps due to the > amount of links going to the 7.4 ALTER TABLE page / the term not having > been updated in awhile, it has not been reindex yet. > > (Perhaps these recent searches will help with that reindexing :) > > > > > (Note that if you've clicked "current" in the docs before, it will > > automatically redirect you. This is more relevant to newer users, and > > the actual links on google). > > > > I do not have the personal expertise to help this situation at all, but > > I would like to call attention to this active thread for the rust docs > > repo - https://github.com/rust-lang/docs.rs/issues/1438 > > <https://github.com/rust-lang/docs.rs/issues/1438>. The corresponding > > site docs.rs <http://docs.rs> has similar issues of always linking to > > outdated versions, and they're currently in the process of working to > > improve things. The thread contains a good bit of findings and > > trial/error. Knowing that PG has similar issues, it seems like there is > > a possibility of benefiting from mutual lessons learned in improving SEO > > and linking. > > Agree in mutual benefits. This topic has been worked on for decades(!) > now on the pgsql-www mailing list. For instance, our findings on > "rel=canonical" are the opposite of what appears in that GitHub thread, > and matches what some other OSS projects are doing (e.g. Django). > > We consider "latest" to be a "superset" of the other versions. We > explicitly do not want to redirect from old to new, given we support 5 > (and briefly 6) major PostgreSQL versions at any given time and want to > ensure users have access to older doc versions. > > > Again, I have no concrete proposals to make, but wanted to draw > > attention to the issue and a good thread of ways to improve / possible > > solutions. > > Thanks, > > Jonathan >
