The Debate Over Online News: It's the Consumer, Stupid

To the likes of AP and UPI I say stop winning because you have the means at your disposal to solve your own problems. AP does not need a war...they just need average web programmers.



If you know anything about web design ( Its what I do http://www.stuffdone.com ) you know you can protect content from search engines now. All reputable search engines ( the ones that matter ) follow rules when it comes to indexing content. The owner posts those rules in meta tags and/or a file "robots.txt" in the root directory of their web site. You can instruct search engines NOT to index any thing you want to exclude. I looked and AP has no such restrictions on their site leaving everything fair game for automated search bots.



AP, learn something about meta tags, and search engines. Google "robots.txt"



They can also place that content inside a password protected directory where only authorized (paying?) parties can view it. Search engines can't index that content.



In addition I note many news sites offer to the public an RSS feed of news which is specifically telling the public and other site owners to post their content on web sites. You can't offer a free feed then complain about who is publishing your content when you invite them to take it.



AP is making it's own problems by poor web design practice. Stop crying and fix it.
About Eric Schmidt
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost