[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #35288: Search Engines Discouraged message improvements

[WordPress Trac]

#35288: Search Engines Discouraged message improvements
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  afercia                              |       Owner:
                                                 |  valentinbora
     Type:  defect (bug)                         |      Status:  accepted
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  5.5
Component:  Administration                       |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-ui-feedback has-patch has-       |     Focuses:  ui
  screenshots                                    |
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by afercia):

 I'm not sure using the term "visibility" is ideal. This is a long standing
 issue in WordPress. What the settings does is just adding a meta tag
 `<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />`.

 Technically, the site is always "visible" to search engines. Instead, the
 robots directive encourages search engines to not index the site. Also,
 it's up to search engines bot to honour this request. Good bots will obey
 and won't index the site. Bad bots will, regardless of the setting.

 I tend to think using the term "visibility" is misleading for users and
 changing it would be best.

 Also, the text displayed in the "At a glance" dashboard widget is still
 not that prominent. Setting the meta robots to `noindex` by mistake would
 be a huge issue from an SEO perspective. I'd tend to think this text
 should stand out from the crowd of text and links in the dashboard. With
 [attachment:"35288.3.diff"] applied, it's still not so noticeable, see
 attached screenshot.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/35288#comment:27>
WordPress Trac <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress publishing platform