link rel=”archives” – What are these?

  • Lorelle

    (@lorelle)


    19 years ago

    I am sure I’m not alone, but I can’t seem to find an answer to this:

    On a generated page, I have a whole bunch of “archive” links like this:

    <link rel="pingback" href="http://example.com/xmlrpc.php" />
    <link rel='archives' title='April 2005' href='http://example.com/?m=200504' />
    <link rel='archives' title='March 2005' href='http://example.com/?m=200503' />
    <link rel='archives' title='February 2005' href='http://example.com/?m=200502' />

    What generates these and what good are they to me?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Kafkaesqui

    (@kafkaesqui)

    19 years ago

    This generates them:

    <?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly&format=link') ?>

    Info on the LINK REL:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.1.2
    http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/values.html#linktypes

    I don’t believe ARCHIVES is a standard component of the spec.

    Along with the usual functionality of providing LINK REL, one purpose in regards to archives is for site crawling by search bots, especially if you don’t use standard archive/category navigation. But you can always pull it out.

    Thread Starter Lorelle

    (@lorelle)

    19 years ago

    I don’t use monthly or any form of date oriented displays on my site, since chronological order isn’t important. I’ll look at the tag, but the fact that this is set up chronologically, does that “matter” to the search engines bots, spiders, and such?

    Thanks!

    Kafkaesqui

    (@kafkaesqui)

    19 years ago

    The issue is merely one of being able to crawl a site, not how it’s accessed. The “chronological” issue is only due to get_archives being the function that’s designed to output link tags. Nothing more.

    Thread Starter Lorelle

    (@lorelle)

    18 years, 12 months ago

    What impact for search engines would it have if I change the tag to:

    <?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&format=link') ?>

    Kafkaesqui

    (@kafkaesqui)

    18 years, 11 months ago

    Lorelle, sorry I missed your last question. I wouldn’t recommend it. Not out of interest for search engines, but for one of page load; especially if you’ve got a few thousand (or more) posts on your blog.

    grdodd

    (@grdodd)

    17 years, 11 months ago

    I noticed in the SEO contest about “v7ndotcom elursrebmem” that the current lead person is using the “link rel=’archives” tag very heavily. Apparently this trick helps support Page Rank or some other metric in terms of search engine ranking.

    Any ideas from any of the members on how this works in terms of SEO?

    GRDODD

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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