Aug. 16, 2007:
More on Google's new X-Robots-Tag directive
Another new feature: the new "X-Robots-Tag" directive, which adds Robots Exclusion Protocol
(REP) META tag support for non-HTML pages. Now, webmasters and site owners can have the same
control over videos, spreadsheets and other indexed file types. Using the example above, if a
promotion page is in PDF format on a typical link such as www.site.com/2007promotion.pdf, a
developer now would use the following command in the file's HTML headers: X-Robots-Tag:
unavailable_after: 31 Dec 2007 23:59:59 EST.
Aug. 14, 2007:
Is Google loosing out to Yahoo?
The bad news for big media is that, for the most part, users are becoming increasingly
dissatisfied with the large national media sites. For example, Disney-owned ABC News.com and the
Microsoft/GE co-owned MSNBC.com portal both finished in a tie for first among the largest media sites.
Time Warner’s CNN.com and Gannett’s USA Today.com both saw their user satisfaction scores drop
from 2006's levels for the same corresponding period. This could be attributed to the fact that
many sites of some regional newspapers are doing a fair job of bringing more local stories online.