[OWW-Discuss] OpenWetWare.org: identity problem/identity feature?

[Jason Morrison]

> Nothing is occcluded. It's invisible to lab websites as well since the tag
> is bracketed by "<wikionly>" tags.
> (...)
> This isn't a popup. It's a section of the page that's invisible to
> returning visitors. In other words, the "visiblility" attribute is by
> default set to 'invisible'.
>

Bill, this sounds great, then!  :)  I think the overall idea is worth
pursuing, and will be valuable to OWW.

I'll take a minute to explain my SEO pedantry:

Unfortunately, we can't count on spiders to appropriately deal with a
"visibility: none" attribute.  So, if the markup is something like:

<p style="visibility: none;">OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing
of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are
working in biology & biological engineering</p>
<p>Plaque assay for gHV-68 using 3T12 fibroblasts.</p>

then it's possible that the Google search result looks like:

*GHV-68 Plaque Assay *- OpenWetWare
OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how,
and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working...
openwetware.org/wiki/GHV-68_Plaque_Assay*

*rather than the current result (
http://www.google.com/search?q=GHV-68%20Plaque%20Assay) with a more targeted
description line.

Also, we probably can't rely on the search engines to establish a session,
so they are fed a visible branding section anyhow.

I'd suggest that OWW.org suppress the branding information for search
engines, say by identifying the User-Agent field in the HTTP request (see
something like http://www.pgts.com.au/download/data/robots_list.txt, or just
look for bot/spider/crawler in the UA field.)  I imagine that this is
convenient to do at the same time as when you check for a session.

Again, I think this is a great idea to support the OWW branding, and just
don't want to see the organic search value drop as a result.

Cheers,
Jason

-- 
Jason Morrison
jason.p.morrison at gmail.com
http://jayunit.net
(585) 216-5657
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