Small Pages

Authored by Michael Pate on October 14th, 2003 at 5:22 PM

notwithstanding the fact that those pages may be the most relevant search results, my arm itches! i blame trackback! - Anil Dash

the Trackback generates an empty page, and Google - being too dumb to tell an empty page from the context that surrounds it - gives it a very high value when it calculates its search results. So Google’s search results are littered with empty pages. - Andrew Orlowski

It took Andrew long enough to figure this out. That is one of the reasons that I always design blogs with comments and trackbacks incorporated into the entry pages. It is actually more of a criticism of the default template designs for Movable Type that it is of Google. Although Andrew still seems to be confused because the phenomenon is not limited to trackbacks.

Just in case I need this for something again, since I’m sure to lose it in the Movable Type forum: a plugin to keep Google from indexing blank comments. - Phil Ringnalda

Just add mt-nocomments.cgi to your robots.txt file, and Google will stop wasting time indexing all your blank comments. - Girlie

An issue noted by many Movable Type users is the server overhead of putting together the comments screen anew every time someone clicks on a Comments link. One way to lessen the burden is to include comments (rather than a comments link) directly into your archive pages. If you use Individual archive pages (as Loren does), it�s even possible to include the commenting form as well. - Dorothea Salo

And it really is a highly relevant search result. - Mark Pilgrim

Update: Mena makes a point about the default template designs.

The use of pop-up windows as a method of TrackBack display came about because pop-ups were a standard method of commenting at the time and we wanted to be consistent with prior interaction models. - Mena Trott