Ask HN: Why isn't Google indexing information about the AT Protocol?

iiameli about 2 hours ago 15 comments

ES version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

I've been observing this for a while, where very basic queries about atproto stuff doesn't show up. But yesterday I found a query that makes it VERY obvious: "list of public atproto relays". Here's DuckDuckGo:

1. https://firehose.directory

2. https://atproto.at/relays

3. https://atproto.wiki/en/wiki/reference/core-architecture/relay

4. https://pulsar.feeds.blue

5. https://leaflet.pub/12022731-ae4f-4a13-9f7a-5738b7a83c2e

Of those results, Google only has 3, the only one on the list that... doesn't have a list of public atproto relays. None of the other sites are present anywhere. Trying not to assume malice instead of incompetence here, but it's really ironic that one of the ecosystems with the strongest ties to the open web, with users creating dozens of new websites every week, isn't getting indexed.

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Discussion (15 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

entropyie•28 minutes ago

Maybe they should have used a name that wasn't already taken...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_AT_command_set

wmf•39 minutes ago

Google search has generally rotted. Can't get promoted for maintenance.

therobots927•38 minutes ago

That’s best case scenario. Worst case is that they’re censoring the internet on a massive scale but have rolled it out slowly enough that no one noticed

bilbo-b-baggins•25 minutes ago

They are. There’s been a bunch of studies already showing how Google skews its results to align with oligarch interests.

whateverboat•about 1 hour ago

https://imgur.com/a/OS7P9jh Seems working for me.

iameli•about 1 hour ago

In the AI overview yeah, but do you see the sites below? I wonder if it's being tuned to prefer generating its own "list of X" implementations and downranking other peoples' lists.

EnglishMobster•about 1 hour ago

Can confirm that I can also reproduce this. Interesting.

runningmike•about 2 hours ago

I got 2300 results. DuckDuckGo Uses google. Google is very personalised. They use many dirty tricks to give personalised results. Use another box and check the results again.

Peanuts99•about 1 hour ago

Doesn't DDG use Bing?

iameli•about 2 hours ago

Are any of those results a list of public atproto relays?

runningmike•about 2 hours ago

Yes.

iameli•about 1 hour ago

Could you link it? Curious to see how buried it is for me. Personalization is one thing but on my results I'm getting Tor relays, Nostr relays, IPFS relays, and Fediverse relays and I haven't yet seen a list of atproto relays. I'm on like page 6 now.

seanhunter•about 1 hour ago

Use incognito/private browsing mode to get a genuine sense of whether something isn’t in the index or whether google decides that even though you’re asking for it you probably don’t want it.

danabramov•about 1 hour ago

I can reproduce the same in incognito mode.

fragmede•36 minutes ago

https://firehose.directory/robots.txt isn't one, but comes up in Google despite that.

https://atproto.at/robots.txt is good and findable with a direct search

https://atproto.wiki/robots.txt is empty but findable on Google.

https://pulsar.feeds.blue/robots.txt is 404 and thus not indexed by Google.

https://leaflet.pub/robots.txt is good. A logged in google search for this finds this for me.

Tell the people at https://pulsar.feeds.blue to fix their robots.txt if they want to get indexed.