1.<MIRROR> tag
The addition of META tags such as for robots and keywords initiated improvement of HTML from document management perspective, but there are lot to be done in this area.
I would like to propose a new mark up tag as extension to HTML 4.0:
Suggest Syntax:
<MIRROR href="www2.cse.psu.edu">PSU
CSE alternative</MORROR>
Advantage:
Mirror sites can be extremely valueble for search engine to return
to users as alternatives to orginal sites.
<MIRROR> tag dedicated to hyperlinks that specfically for the
sites that mirror the original site, this will enable seach engine
effectively detect and define the set of mirrors and therefore can
provide user multiple access alternatives in the search result
listing, thus user will be empowered to get the information
fast and ideally as 'local' as possible and being able to access
alternatives when some server are unavailable.
compare to the HTML 4.0 spec of LINKs tags, we can adapt it in
the following format to achieve the above <MIRROR> tag
functionality:
<LINK rel="MIRROR"
origin="http://www.cse.psu.edu"
href="http://www2.cse.psu.edu">PSU-CSE alternative site in
Europe</A>
'origin' can field can have the default value of current page
when not supplied.
2. site building: 'submit.html' page
similar to the convention of index.html(home.html/default.html) , 'submit.html' would be the webmaster's choice to imform the robot to index those files listed in submit.html first when it visit the site.
Submit.html which could include the most important and
representatinve files on the site might provide a better guidance
for robots to follow and traverse those first and should have
higher weights in the ranking process. For instance, for the
PSU-CSE departmental server, we might want to list the few pages
that contains our degree program, course listing and faculty
research list within the submit.html.
**The above suggestion had been formally submitted to
'www-html@w3.org' mailing list as
'Future of HTML' position paper for upcoming "Shaping the Future of
HTML" workshop as of 3/6/98.