jdMorgan - 2:45 pm on Oct 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

Rather than stuffing the robots metatag with a long list of provider-proprietary attributes, how about making a generic attribute, such as altmeta/noaltmeta, and then adding a new subordinate metatag to specify a preference-ordered list of directory alternate meta-data providers?

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow,nocache,altmeta">
<meta name="altmeta" content="ODP,YDIR,BOTW">

This would grant permission to use alternate meta-data provided by ODP, Yahoo!, and BOTW -- at the search provider's discretion, of course.

---

<meta name="robots" content="altmeta">
<meta name="altmeta" content="ODP,YDIR,noBOTW">

This would exclude BOTW meta-data from being used in search results titles/descriptions.

---

Then, either

<meta name="robots" content="noaltmeta">
or
<meta name="robots" content="noODP">

could be interpreted as equivalent, getting us out of the backwards-compatibility box. If noaltmeta or noodp is found, then any subsequent <meta name="altmeta" ...> tag should be ignored.

Who knows who the search providers of the 22nd century will be? I subscribe to the philosophy that says that cool URLs don't change and that Web resources should have a long life. A granular approach as described above would allow for search providers rising and falling, while leaving Webmasters the option of fine control on frequently-maintained sites, or rough all-or-nothing control on pages that may never be updated again. At the same time, the preference-ordered list could be taken as a preference guide by search providers, without necessarily forcing them to use another provider's directory (with all the attendant contractural ties that might imply).

Just a thought...

Jim