LaunchpadGooglification

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= Making Launchpad Google-friendly =
## page was renamed from LaunchpadGooglification
= Making Launchpad friendly to search engines =
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  * Created: 21/04/05 by MarkShuttleworth[[BR]]
  * Priority: HighPriority[[BR]]
  * People: NeedsLead, NeedsSecond[[BR]]
  * Contributors: MarkShuttleworth[[BR]]
  * Interested: [[BR]]
  * Status: BrainDump, BreezyGoal, UduBof, LaunchpadSpecification[[BR]]
  * Branch: [[BR]]
  * Malone Bug: [[BR]]
  * Packages: [[BR]]
  * Depends: [[BR]]
 * Created: 21/04/05 by MarkShuttleworth[[BR]]
 * Priority: HighPriority[[BR]]
 * People: MatthewPaulThomasLead, DafyddHarriesSecond[[BR]]
 * Contributor: MarkShuttleworth
 * Status: UduBof, LaunchpadSpecification, ApprovedSpecification
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== Introduction == == Summary ==
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This spec identifies issues related to search engine crawling the Launchpad
web site, and making sure that the entire site is discoverable from the home
page.
Making Launchpad maximally usable to search engines will increase exposure of Launchpad pages to developer eyeballs. There are four main issues: making useful pages indexed, making useless pages not indexed, preventing link spam, and removing the appearance of link spam. All these problems can be solved or minimized with technical means.
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== Rationale == == Spec elsewhere ==
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We have a ton of very interesting content in Launchpad, and we also have a
very neat URL schema. We need to make sure that Google and other search
engines can crawl the entire web site, starting from the home page, without
depending on outside links to interesting pages.

== Scope and Use Cases ==

Google starts with the home page. From there, it should be possible to walk
a list of every product, every project, every distro, every package, every
branch, every bug, every bounty and every translation.

== Implementation Plan ==

Currently, we have a few bottlenecks in the process for anyone crawling our
site. For example, we don't publish a list of every product, with links to
the individual product pages. We only have a search interface for
"products", and then we give a list of matching products. So the search
engine can't penetrate past that search box, because it has no idea what to
put in there and "submit". In fact, doing an "empty" search would produce a
list of all products, but the search engine will almost certainly never
simulate a form post.

We need to identify all such bottlenecks and make sure that we have a way to
navigate past them. For example, if the product search page had a link
saying "Show All Products" that took one to a list of all products, linked
to their product pages in Launchpad, then Google could bypass the form,
follow that link, then proceed to index each of the product pages
individually.

=== User Interface Requirements ===

The following areas are bottlenecks:

 1. the /products/ search page. It is recommended that we implement a "show
 all products" link which does exactly that.

 1. the /projects/ page. It is recommended that we implement a "show all
 projects" link which takes the viewer to a page listing all projects with
 links to the individual project pages.

== Outstanding Issues ==

 * should these "show all" pages be one-long-page, or should they be
   batched? It's not likely that a human will have any use for a batched
   interface of all products in any event, so it may be best to do it all as
   a single page.
https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/LaunchpadGooglification

Making Launchpad friendly to search engines

Status

Summary

Making Launchpad maximally usable to search engines will increase exposure of Launchpad pages to developer eyeballs. There are four main issues: making useful pages indexed, making useless pages not indexed, preventing link spam, and removing the appearance of link spam. All these problems can be solved or minimized with technical means.

Spec elsewhere

https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/LaunchpadGooglification

UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/LaunchpadGooglification (last edited 2008-08-06 16:39:12 by localhost)