Is it important to include http:// in signatures

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Marshalrusty
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by Marshalrusty »

jaunty_mellifluous wrote:I heard chrome browser isn't making http:// visible when people type addresses in links bar menus. I suppose it's not important anymore that people remember http:// as well. Because a normal user is only using links that don't require these type of details.
I consider this a dangerous path. While it's true that the vast majority of users have no idea what the protocol means anyway, they will at least currently acknowledge its existence. This is similar to Windows hiding "known file extensions" because you can just view the file icon. Then, if you want to rename 'file.txt' to 'file.sql' using explorer, you have to dig around in the menus to disable the "feature". It's one thing to hide things that are truly happening in the background (like headers) and something entirely different to hide important information that specifies the environment being worked in.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by Pony99CA »

Ger wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:Except, by your own admission, they do interpret the HTML. Finding URLs in my theoretical search engine is easier than in yours because yours has to look for A tags, then find the HREF attribute (or, for image search engines, the IMG tag and the SRC attribute).
Why would that be harder? You don't even need a regex for it.
It's harder because "yours" requires extra conditions to not return non-tagged URLs.
Ger wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:I understand the limitations. I was just saying that somebody could define a NOLINK tag for such URLs and was citing the NOFOLLOW attribute value as a precedent. I think the NOFOLLOW attribute value was created to solve a problem (spammers linking to their Web sites in blogs), so somebody could equally well define a tag for URLs that should not be treated as links (or, as you pointed out, they could add the REL attribute to other tags).
That would mean redefining HTML. Could be a solution for the future, but we're talking about present day now.
True, but what is HTML 5 doing? ;)
Ger wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:Anyway, this is dragging on. The point I was trying to make to the OP was that you should include http:// in URLs. It doesn't hurt and it might help. ;)
And the point I try to make is that it has no use. ;)
You may be correct, but it won't hurt, right?

Anyway, I've set up my experiment. I've created a new Web page at my domain (!linktest.html) which is not linked to by any page on my site. I've put the URL of the page on my site's index page (it's in a display :none DIV tag at the bottom of the page so you'll need to do a View Source to see it, but search engines should ignore styles, right?).

Doing a search on non-tagged URLs site:svpocketpc.com currently returns no results. We'll see if that's the case in a few days.

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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by missliberty »

You could quite easily go for a regexp that checks the format and auto-adds / strips any parts if necessary. That's the beauty with phpBB, with a little knowledge of coding you're flexible like hell.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by Dog Cow »

Pony99CA wrote: I don't know why I would use a URL that I wouldn't want a legitimate search engine (as opposed to a spam bot) to find.
Here's my robots.txt file.

I've got disallowed the password resend page, reactivation page, webmail, rss feed, search page, and a posting page.

If I were to go further, I might add more URLs which require log in, such as PM sending, and the friendslist, but this is good enough for now.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by Ger »

Pony99CA wrote:It's harder because "yours" requires extra conditions to not return non-tagged URLs.
What kind of extra condition? It's simply tagged as a paragraph with nothing extra so it's plain text within a paragraph. No exclusion is needed.
Pony99CA wrote:True, but what is HTML 5 doing? ;)
HTML5 is doing the future. This whole topic is about whether or not to include http:// in present day.
Pony99CA wrote:You may be correct, but it won't hurt, right?
It won't hurt indeed, but it isn't important. That's the question and I still think it is not.
Pony99CA wrote: Anyway, I've set up my experiment.
(...)
We'll see! :)
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by onehundredandtwo »

Ger wrote:HTML5 is doing the future. This whole topic is about whether or not to include http:// in present day.
http:// is the protocal. The W3C and WHATWG are aware that HTTP hasn't always been the only protocal and won't always be the only protocal.

For example, Google is creating their own protocal called SPDY which may replace HTTP in the future. FTP is also used for large downloads etc.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by Ger »

onehundredandtwo wrote:
Ger wrote:HTML5 is doing the future. This whole topic is about whether or not to include http:// in present day.
http:// is the protocal. The W3C and WHATWG are aware that HTTP hasn't always been the only protocal and won't always be the only protocal.

For example, Google is creating their own protocal called SPDY which may replace HTTP in the future. FTP is also used for large downloads etc.
I know, but that's not the issue. Please read the whole topic, you'll see the question is if a search bot would make a difference between

Code: Select all

<p>check it out: http://www.example.com</p>

Code: Select all

<p>check it out: www.example.com</p>

Code: Select all

<p>check it out: <a href="http://www.example.com">http://www.example.com</a></p>

Code: Select all

<p>check it out: <a href="http://www.example.com">www.example.com</a></p>
So it really isn't about protocols. In fact, I doubt TS has even a clue what a protocol means.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by onehundredandtwo »

EDIT: I now understand what you mean, but domains and pages don't necessarily have to be in HTTP, as I mentioned above. AFAIK Google's SPDY still uses the same URI scheme, so bots shouldn't assume that any URI runs on HTTP.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by Pony99CA »

Ger wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:It's harder because "yours" requires extra conditions to not return non-tagged URLs.
What kind of extra condition? It's simply tagged as a paragraph with nothing extra so it's plain text within a paragraph. No exclusion is needed.
Your hypothetical search engine only looks in A tags for URLs, so yours needs to exclude URLs outside of A tags. My hypothetical search engine grabs all URLs in an HTML file, so mine doesn't need to exclude anything (or write a harder, slower regular expression).
Ger wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:True, but what is HTML 5 doing? ;)
HTML5 is doing the future. This whole topic is about whether or not to include http:// in present day.
And I thought there were HTML 5 browsers out already (like on the iPhone). :D

HTML 5 final is the future; HTML 5 draft is here today. My point was that, if the need were proven, somebody could update the draft in short order. (I'm not saying that it will be updated, merely that it could be.)

Also, ignore the future at your own peril. Even if search engines today don't search for URLs outside of A tags, that doesn't mean that future engines won't. I wouldn't want to have to go back and update all of my content to add the protocol to content I posted all over the Internet.

As I said, adding the protocol won't hurt and it might help (today or in the future), so why not do it?

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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by ToonArmy »

AFAIK search engine spiders will only follow links, which will almost always be any anchors with a href attribute, they won't follow URLs that are just in the page text. Why? They are supposed to act like normal browsers, crawling the web from the users perspective. They might however visit the URLs they stumble across in your pages but it won't be counted as a link from your site.
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Re: Is it important to include http:// in signatures

Post by arlielouka99 »

surely if BBCODE is turned off, your link won't be recognised by google as a link, rather as just text?
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