[smerriman]

http://www.bridgebase.com/robots.txt has /forums/ now blocked from robots.

I use Google all of the time to search the forum (site:bridgebase.com/forums/), since the inbuilt forum search is terrible. Now all of the results are gone.

Why?

[hrothgar]

 smerriman, on 2018-June-10, 17:01, said:

http://www.bridgebase.com/robots.txt has /forums/ now blocked from robots.

I use Google all of the time to search the forum (site:bridgebase.com/forums/), since the inbuilt forum search is terrible. Now all of the results are gone.

Why?

I am guessing GDPR

[smerriman]

There is no conceivable reason for GDPR affecting Google's cache, unless European visitors are 100% blocked from the forums.

[helene_t]

 smerriman, on 2018-June-10, 17:24, said:

There is no conceivable reason for GDPR affecting Google's cache, unless European visitors are 100% blocked from the forums.

Sometimes, people post cheating accusations directed at named users. They will be edited by mods quickly but there's a risk that the original will be in the cache.

[smerriman]

 helene_t, on 2018-June-10, 17:27, said:

Sometimes, people post cheating accusations directed at named users. They will be edited by mods quickly but there's a risk that the original will be in the cache.

True, but that's not relevant to GDPR (anyone can post anyone else's info on any forum / comment system anywhere, that doesn't put you at fault), and if that was the real reason regardless of GDPR, that seems a bit of an over-reaction compared to the benefits.

[barmar]

We put the forums in our robots.txt Disallow list a few months ago because we thought the excess load from crawlers was causing errors.

We've taken it out, and if problems return we'll investigate other solutions.