Google search for 'scala' results, at least in some locations, highlights a moderate-quality and unflattering user question thread right under the main language page

[Ichoran]

This is a rather unfortunate and unhelpful first sub-result returned on searching 'scala' on Google:

I don't know if there's a good way to de-emphasize this, but it's not the most essential information one wants to know when looking for Scala (even if one is taking a negative view of it).

[keynmol]

Btw, where does the link lead to?

Note that in UK this is not the case

[lrytz]

The problem reproduces for me. It links to https://users.scala-lang.org/t/why-scala-is-not-popular/9687, perhaps that link was shared and became popular on some platform? Here are all forum threads sorted by view count, the one in question is at position 9 https://users.scala-lang.org/latest?ascending=false&order=views.

[fsalvi]

We could disallow this page in robots.txt to remove it from google index. But I'm not sure it's the best approach.

[SethTisue]

Based on the advice at:

• https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-stop-search-engines-from-indexing-a-particular-community-topic/287982
• https://meta.discourse.org/t/need-to-find-a-solution-to-block-indexing-topics-from-a-category/338813/2

I did the following:

1. I used the admin "Unlist" button on the thread in question, which should prevent it from being found when people use Discourse's own search functionality.
2. Created a new category called "De-Indexed" and made the category visible only to logged-in users (trust level 0 or higher)
3. Reassigned the topic in question to the new category

so it now shows up as:

I confirmed that when you visit the site when you're not logged in, the category is invisible and if you try to visit the topic directly you get a "Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private." page.

So very likely this should take care of it, but I'm leaving the ticket open until we've confirmed that the search results change in the next re-indexing.

[SethTisue]

@fsalvi do you have access to the Google Search Console for scala-lang.org? Would you be able to follow the instructions at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846?hl=en to fast-track the removal of this URL from their index?

[fsalvi]

Yes. I did it. I don't know how long it will take...

[SethTisue]

🎉 (some of the new choices are a bit weird, but not actively harmful)

thank you Fabien!