Traffick reports on the over-hype of Google Autolink and I agree. Autolink is just a tool. You have to turn it on to make it work. If you don’t like it, turn it off. That’s from the user perspective.
From a web site owner’s perspective, I can understand some concern, but no where near what some bloggers are ranting about. If you really don’t like it as a site owner, add the Autolink blocking JavaScript. I think that’s reasonable.
If you don’t want Google to index all or part of your site you have to add a noindex meta tag and/or modify your robots.txt tag don’t you?
I suppose at least Google could provide an easier way for web site owners to determine whether Autolink works on their site or not. But I can see Google not doing that as it would cause an inconsistent user experience with their toolbar.
I’m sure it will come up this week at SES NYC and I’ll be sure to post on it.
Tags: Autolink, Google
