Intentionally degrade SEO for non-latest stable docs

[choldgraf]

Details

I have noticed a common problem across many projects that are hosted with readthedocs, particularly those that have been around for quite some time, which is that older versions of the documentation often show up first in search results.

Here is a recent example I ran into with Sphinx's own docs:

As you can see, the 1.5.6 Sphinx documentation, which is many many versions old by now, is the first result. It also seems problematic that the latest stable version is not listed at all, and instead we only find a 4.0 dev version of the pages as well.

So here's my question: would it be possible to add an option to intentionally degrade the SEO for non-latest stable (or latest/) documentation builds?

I think that this could help improve the confusion around projects that have really old documentation show up (it is helpful to have the "these aren't the latest docs" flags, but I find it is still quite confusing for newcomers to follow them)

[stsewd]

Tomorrow we will be releasing "hidden versions" #6792 https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/versions.html#states

That should help with this problem.

[choldgraf]

well that was a fast turnaround on that feature 😆

thanks for the link - I agree that definitely should help. when a branch is "inactive" will it also stop showing up in google?

[stsewd]

When a version is inactive, the docs are deleted, so I guess google will stop to show those results?

[choldgraf]

oh sorry, I meant "hidden", not inactive

[stsewd]

When a version is hidden it's listed as Disallow in a robots.txt file, that should stop google of indexing those pages. If those pages are already indexed, looks like google will eventually stop to show them https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/65184/will-the-already-indexed-urls-be-removed-if-i-use-a-robots-txt-for-my-site

[choldgraf]

awesome - well it sounds like I can close this and you all deserve a 🍺 :-)

[humitos]

well it sounds like I can close this and you all deserve a beer :-)

Happy to share it with you... after the global 🌎 pandemic 😷 , of course 😄