[thelist] Site check: Staples.com

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at speakeasy.net
Tue Sep 20 17:46:21 CDT 2005


On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 02:01 +1000, Ken Schaefer wrote:
  [Ian Anderson wrote:]
    [I wrote:]
> > >The fact that I got a blank page. Thus, it's broken.
> >
> > This discussion has been quite interesting, and in general I am in
> > agreement with Ken's position regarding pragmatic web design.
> > 
> > However, it cannot be argued that the code delivered as the staples
> > default page is acceptable practice;
> > 
> <snipped code>
> >
> > Note the empty anchor element, that could have linked to the real home
> > page, allowing search engines and users without JavaScript to enter the
> > site with one extra action.
> 
> That's a fair enough comment.
> 
> However Google seems to be able to index the Staples.com site anyway. A
> (very) quick glance through cached pages shows a number of pages recently
> cached from the new-look site. Similarly with MSN Search. So, at the very
> least, it appears the major search engines are able to get to the content
> somehow.

Google also indexes a lot of formats that simply aren't appropriate for
use on the World Wide Web due to their closed, proprietary nature (MSN,
given their ownership, knows no better, of course). And at least in
other areas, Google is not known for standards compliance; look at
recent discussions on Gmail in anti-spam forums.

Even if the duck-tape-and-Javascript redirect appears to work, there is
the chance Google will, in the future, see the error of their ways in
retaining this bit of error recovery (and make no mistake about it,
that's exactly what it is).

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>



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