Re: once more: documentation search indexing

On 3/16/22 6:32 AM, Michael Christofides wrote:
> Sorry to resurrect an old thread, this seemed so close to going through.
> 
>     I agree with the UX tweak being needed -- I've missed that button a t
>     least a couple of times myself, and I am the one who put it there :)
> 
> +1 for changing this, I also never saw the button somehow.
> 
>     I do think the bigger question is if we want the actual /current/ URL
>     to be the canonical one, rather than the /<version number of current
>     version>/?
> 
>     I would've guessed that's better? But again I don't realy know, that's
>     a guess, so if it was considered and rejected for good reasons then
>     ignore that comment :)
> 
> 
> I think this is important, but that either would be a big improvement 
> over the status quo. I think there are a couple of advantages of going 
> with /current/ as the canonical URL though:
> 
> 1. Search engines factor in being told what is canonical, but it is only 
> one factor they consider[0], so I think there'll be benefits of the URL 
> we mark as canonical not changing every year (although links that are 
> only one major version old would be a lot better than the status quo).
> 
> 2. It would make it more common for people to link back to the /current/ 
> URLs on Stack Overflow, in blog posts, and similar. In the vast majority 
> of cases this will improve the experience for folks following those 
> links in future, and it will also help search engines be confident that 
> the /current/ version is the canonical one.
> 
> Having said that, I'd favour pushing the proposed patch over doing 
> nothing, as it will still be a big improvement! Thanks for all the work 
> on this so far.

If there is consensus on this approach, it's been ready for awhile and 
collecting dust[1]. I'm OK with pushing it -- I've used this before in a 
few different situations and have pushed for this method for a few years 
-- but I want to ensure the other folks on the web team are comfortable 
or at least willing to try it out and see.

Thanks,

Jonathan

[1] 
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/6cfa15b4-77a5-0961-5168-7d191989ff73%40postgresql.org