[whatwg] Proposal: Exclude robots on a per-link basis

[Kornel Lesiński]

On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:20:28 -0000, Markus Ernst <derernst at gmx.ch> wrote:

> Viewing the logs of applications I wrote, I noticed that a considerable  
> number of requests are from robots following links of types such as "Add  
> to shopping cart" or "Remember this item" - links that typically point  
> to the same page they are clicked on, with some GET variable that  
> triggers an action on the server.

Actions that have significant side effects, like "Remember this item",  
should be performed using POST method, which well-behaved bots do not  
execute.

Exclusion of URLs based on on query string arguments could be done with  
wildcards in robots.txt (Googlebot supports this extension already):

Disallow: *add-item=*

-- 
regards, Kornel Lesiński