[…] unlimited list of space delimited class names. Like Google’s section targeting that’s a crappy crawler directive, though. However, it doesn’t hurt to make use of this Yahoo feature with all sorts of screen […]

It should be better.

Hopefully this is just a step in the right direction and we’re not stuck with a half baked attempt at something that can be much better (and easier to implement.)

A search engine should not ignore the fact that a huge amount of Web sites *are* built inefficiently. A caring search engine should be smart enough to come out with something well thought out that can get applied to legacy code without hassles.

Your robots.txt syntax suggestion shows that Yahoo! has the potential, so why was it designed that thoughtless in the first place?

Because you guys think that everybody not following state of the art principles is wrong and not worth a second thought?

If you want to develop great stuff for the masses, you should study the great unwashed to discover that many of them are non-geeks still making use of outdated processes and technologies. That’s wrong from a geek’s perspective, but reality.

If Yahoo! would have done it a bit smarter, I would have praised a good initiative. Unfortunately I can’t do that.

If someone has to update every page of their site for such a change then they’re building their sites inefficiently and dare I say, wrong.

After all, its the developer’s decision to use this in the first place and weigh whether the change is worth it.

The implementation might not be the greatest but it’s good that Yahoo! is thinking about this kind of stuff and actually has enough balls to through something out there to get feedback on.

Adding CSS selectors to the robots.txt file is a ridiculous suggestion IMO. How about just Noindex-class:advertising,nav or Noindex-id:main-nav?

Full disclosure: I work for Yahoo! as a Web Developer but not on search.