Last modified: 2014-03-17 02:54:12 UTC
For some reason search engines are not showing redirect pages anymore. I'm pretty sure a search such as * https://www.google.com.br/search?q=%22Fryderyk+Szopen%22+site%3Aen.wikipedia.org or * http://br.search.yahoo.com/search?n=10&ei=UTF-8&va_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve_vt=any&vp_vt=title&vf=all&vm=p&fl=0&fr=yfp-t-707&p=intitle%3A%22Fryderyk+Szopen%22&vs=en.wikipedia.org would return a page whose title is "Fryderyk Szopen", since there is a redirect at * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fryderyk_Szopen&redirect=no What changed? A search for 'intitle:"Fryderyk Szopen" site:en.wikipedia.org' returns nothing: * https://www.google.com.br/search?q=intitle%3A"Fryderyk+Szopen"+site%3Aen.wikipedia.org This is bad for articles on wikis (e.g. those in Portuguese) where there are title differences caused by language variants, since both titles are valid but we can have only one page (and we shouldn't privilege one of the variants).
(In reply to comment #0) > This is bad for articles on wikis (e.g. those in Portuguese) where there are > title differences caused by language variants, since both titles are valid but > we can have only one page (and we shouldn't privilege one of the variants). bumping to highest and CCing Robla and Sumanah.
There doesn't appear to be any metadata that prohibits the indexing of redirects. Beyond pinging Google, Yahoo, and others about how they index our content, I'm not sure there's a lot we can do. mybugs.mail@gmail.com, you wrote: "For some reason search engines are not showing redirect pages anymore." Are you sure something has changed? From when?
Hmm... The best I can find was this topic from 2011-01-19 (in Portuguese) https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Esplanada/propostas/Fim_de_Wikipedia:Pseudo-redirect_%2819jan2011%29 where I described what I believe was the old behavior. Specifically on https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=23512390 I mentioned that if someone search for "Adrianna Prieto" (without the quotes, the "site" and the "intitle" parameters, contrary to what I did on comment 0) on Google it would suggest the correct name "Adriana Prieto". This still happens, but not if I search using the parameters: https://www.google.com.br/search?q=Adrianna+Prieto https://www.google.com.br/search?q=intitle%3A"Adrianna+Prieto"+site%3Apt.wikipedia.org On https://pt.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=23576777 I mentioned that asking Google to 'define:"Dilma Roussef"' (instead of the correct "Dilma Rousseff") as in https://www.google.com.br/search?q=define:%22Dilma+Roussef%22&defl=all returns a paragraph whose text is from the real article, but as if the text were from the URL corresponding to the redirect page (as I was expecting on comment 0). Besides, I said that at that time, asking for 'define:"Dilma Rouseff"' would not do the same (but I just checked and it does return the text from the real article as well) So maybe this is not a MW bug after all, since I was testing using different commands in the two mentioned occasions...
(In reply to comment #2) > There doesn't appear to be any metadata that prohibits the indexing of > redirects. Beyond pinging Google, Yahoo, and others about how they index our > content, I'm not sure there's a lot we can do. (In reply to comment #3) > So maybe this is not a MW bug after all, since I was testing using different > commands in the two mentioned occasions... Resolving INVALID
