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citusdata
Google pics up old tutorials, try to fix that
Add canonical links in the 5.x version of the docs tutorials pointing at the new version. The "see latest version" link breaks there because the URL has changed.
The canonical link will hopefully get the search engines to change their index.
This commit allows us to set arbitrary canonical header links per page: https://github.com/citusdata/citus_docs/pull/424/commits/e3b46cc63d2eb4d65ecc2b4d8402fed045c1e178
Cherry-pick it to the previous version of docs and modify it to affect just the tutorials.
(Thanks to @lithp for reporting the SEO problem)
Update: if we redeploy old versions then RTD will repopulate the canonical link and point to the newest version. That link points to whatever was newest at the time of deployment.
A while ago I redeployed older docs versions so they could point the canonical link at newer versions. Verified that Google now lists the v7.3 tutorials.
@saicitus pointed out that the terms "paper trail citus" and "rss feed citus" still bring up old versions.
I visited each version of the docs to see where the canonical links point, and found:
- 7.2 -> 7.3
- 7.1 -> 7.2
- 7.0 -> 7.1
- 6.2 -> 7.0
- 6.1 -> 7.0
- 6.0 -> 6.1
- 5.2 -> 6.0
- 5.1 -> 5.2
- 5.0 -> 5.1
Although they all point transitively to 7.3, I'm not sure whether googlebot keeps hopping down the chain. So I redeployed all versions today, making them all point directly to 7.3 as the newest version.
Then I submitted the versions to the google fetcher, and clicked the buttons to request indexing.
I'm running into an indexing quota so I need to wait and press more of those Request Indexing buttons later.
Hmm, "paper trail citus" and "rss feed citus" are still coming up with old versions, even after I told google to re-index. Maybe we can give it another week or so and then see what else we can do if it doesn't correct itself.
The canonical links have been in place for a long time but the problem still exists. Other than causing those old pages to hard-redirect the browser to the new version, I don't know how to give the google bot any stronger signal.
