jcrb

That will not help some of us whose name is our email

oldjack

Some people were horrified when deja.com (since bought by google) started archiving usenet postings and making them searchable on the web. They thought their usenet postings would disappear forever when the posts dropped off the news servers because of age.

More people were horrified when google started indexing pdf, Lotus, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, rtf and other formats. Some companies had put payroll info, etc on the web in those formats, in the belief that no one would know they were there.

I apologize for stating the obvious, but even if there is a robots.txt exclusion for the forums (and the powers-that-be may not want to do this because of the number of people who become new flyertalkers by seeing a forum thread in a google search result), the public can still read these forums. As I write this, 315 people have viewed this thread alone. Nobody knows who they are.

stimpy

Usenet has always been intentionally broadcast to the world. You always knew that the whole world could easily read your posts without having to do any kind of extra work. It was sent to them directly. And people have been archiving Usenet since the 80's. So while I have Usenet posts from over 10 years ago that are accessible by Google, I don't mind it. However Flyertalk is not the same. We don't send Flyertalk feeds to every internet site in the world. It's our little club. And as I said earlier, surfing to flyertalk.com and poking around isn't the same as plugging in Hotel XXX sucks into Google and finding some hate thread of ours.

jcrb

yeah what he said........ FT is not usenet, FT is not "the big wide world" there is a difference between it being "possible" for someone to find your post about how you are going to be out of town for 2 months of a RTW trip with eventual cross refrences to pictures of you and a good guess where you live. and it being just a goodle search away, a big difference.

redbeard911

When I run my handle through google, I get about 6 links and the following message:

They must be referring to WWBTNFTTP.

Kiwi Flyer

So temptation gets the better of me and I check my handle. What do I get but 2 links to FT and another 377 totally unrelated links

oldjack

By default, google gives you only 2 results from a given site, unless you click on a link to get more results from that site. In your search, right below the 2 links to FT, there is another link that says:

More results from www.flyertalk.com

Click that link and you see:

Results 1 - 10 of about 156 from www.flyertalk.com for "Kiwi Flyer"

John at Webflyer

Google indexing the site is a good thing.

We're not likely to block the largest and best search engine.

jcrb

Is there any chance we could block it from OMNI? I mean I can see the benefit from advertising FT to the world as the pinicle of points and miles knowledge in the universe but it would not seem that a google indexed OMNI surves any useful purpose w.r.t. to presenting FT to the outside world (and as some have stated it might not be a good thing for someone who knows nothing of FT to have OMNI be their first taste of it, after all OMNI is a very highly acquired taste )

Seriously any chance we can have OMNI, Itinerary and the CommunityBuzz! boards blocked from the search engines? I don't think they ad anything to advancing FTs goals and I think they tend to contain personal info that while we have chosen to share with FT, I don't think anyone really wants to see in google. Well what about it?

hnechets

Fascinating stuff, though...

Got 25 hits on my user name. Some were blasts from the past. Some gave me a "this page cannot be displayed" error, and some gave me a bunch of blue FT borders repeated down the screen with no content.

I have no problem with the indexing, just find it interesting as to what's captured and what's not.

^

PERRL

I share the hesitancy of having all posts "exposed" to the world. But they already are, just not so easily found. Perhaps the next time we are sent our monthly FT email, we can be apprised of the opening of the gates?

On the other hand, the search function in Google is so much better than the current search function -- faster, doesn't have trouble with single or double letters, easy to look for phrases and exclude items -- that I wonder if we can have Google be our own search engine.

Pointfreak!

Google is a way of life... Learn it's positives. Type in your phone number...if your in "the book" your in Google...complete with address.

As for FT, I view this as a good thing, potentially bringing more people to our second home. If a lone-surfer types in "United Award Ticket Info" and gets directed here, I believe thats a good thing.

Bottom Line: Flyertalk IS the "outside world". If you dont want it archived for life...dont post it.