

How to hide Ryanair - cavedave
http://liveatthewitchtrials.blogspot.com/2011/03/search-engine-deoptimization.html

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joshkdavies
Please excuse my ignorance if these guys are now owned by Ryanair, a quick
Google suggests they are not, but it looks like Jetbird (an executive jet
company) did a straight copy and paste of this for term 2.v.

"(v) You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the
prior written consent of Ryanair. Such consent may be withdrawn at any time at
JetBird own discretion."

<http://www.flyjetbird.com/en/fns/Terms-of-Use.aspx>

I wonder if Ryanair knows one of their competitors are using their T&C's. On
the other hand, I wonder if Jetbird know they are listing one of their
competitors on their website.

Very amusing to see this! Makes you wonder how many companies Ctrl+C Ctrl+V
their T&C's and Privacy Policies from other websites.

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lanstein
You haven't met many lawyers, have you? ;)

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joshkdavies
Not many no, but the company name of who I'm stealing from would be the first
thing I Ctrl+F!

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wtallis
When I hear _lawyers_ and _computers_ being talked about together, the first
thing that comes to mind is that they tend to use WordPerfect. So, not only is
it not safe to assume any level of computer savvyness, I'm not even sure that
ctrl-f would be the right shortcut.

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furyg3
Google should, for giggles, just drop a good number of sites with these terms
one day.

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Tichy
Google probably would get the permission to link to Ryanair, though. And
Google has to look good in the eye of searchers. They want to find what they
are looking for and don't really care about the reasons for some results to be
not available.

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snorkel
But Google is in a unique position to quickly correct a lot of bad T&C
behaviors simply by implying that having those terms may hurt the SEO of
offending sites. If SEOs suspected that was part of Google's ranking process
then we'd see a lot of bad T&C clauses suddenly dropped.

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alex_c
The phrase "Google is in a unique position to quickly correct a lot of bad
[...] behaviors" sends chills down my spine.

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chris_j
The perverse thing about terms forbidding deep linking into a website is that
it is so easy to prevent deep linking by technical means. (In fact, it's so
easy that even mentioning it seems like a cliche.) On each HTTP request,
examine the Referer: header and, if you don't like it, redirect to your
homepage. Is there any reason why companies like Ryanair don't just do this?

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qntm
Because circumventing that filter is even easier than installing the filter in
the first place?

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waqf
Circumventing that filter is easy for the user, but I don't see how it's easy
for the referring website.

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TimMontague
A referrer is not sent when following a link from a secure website (https) to
a non-secure website.

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3>

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chris_j
Thanks for the information. I had not realised that. There are still plenty of
other measure that Ryanair could use, of course, in the case where there was
no Referer: header, such putting some unique (and constantly changing) id into
a cookie such that links from another site wouldn't have the correct id. As
other have suggested, perhaps they are perfectly happy with _most_ deep links
into their site, just not from certain sites such as price comparison sites.
Far be it from me to speculate about such things, of course.

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matid
I assume that provided I never visit their website I'm not bound by their T&Cs
and can therefore link to ryanair.com to my heart's content, right? :)

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jvdongen
Funny how the page containing the terms of service for ryanair is titled
'copywrite' :)

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SeanDav
A part of me would love to do this - just to teach them a lesson....Maybe I
will save it for Dr Evil day!

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MichaelApproved
What lesson are you trying to teach them?

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jsmcgd
That they should think through the consequences of their terms and conditions.

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GrandMasterBirt
They do. Its just like signing a lease which indicates "no pets allowed" when
everyone and their mother in the building has one, and the landlord knows. Its
because if the clause is not in there and your dog is howling all night long
they can do nothing. They may want content farms not linking, or perhaps other
unknown super secret spy stuff?

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shpxnvz
It's more like walking into a store that has a tiny book on the floor _inside_
the door that, if you open and read it, tells you that by having already
entered the store you've agreed to be prohibited from telling anybody about
anything you've seen inside without written consent.

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Chrono
Since this is Ryanair we are talking about... I hope someone actually does
this.

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ivank
How exactly would deoptimizing Ryanair hurt them financially? Do Ryanair
customers search Google for anything but "Ryanair" when they want to get to
ryanair.com?

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rmc
Ryanair have such a well known airline brand that it's unlikely they are
relying on organic search results.

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patd
A lot of non-tech people don't type any URL, they just type "Ryanair" in
Google and click on the first link.

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paulgb
I do that (searching from the address bar) a lot, especially with non-US sites
(like Ryanair) where you're not sure if it's .com or .co.uk or what.

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MichaelApproved
Why do companies even have this clause in their T&C? What's the benefit?

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praptak
Too many lawyers who want to look useful.

I actually remember my boss telling me to put bullshit clauses in contract
drafts so that those people have something to chew at and refrain from messing
with the actual matter of the contract.

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bambax
This is a well known tactic, and it works. When discussing a list of points in
a meeting, the secret is to have a big controversial question come up first
(that you don't actually care about): dealing with this first question eats up
time, but what's better, it exhausts everyone. Then all the following points
are much easier to sell.

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eam
While we're at it, Dustin Curtis should suggest a site re-design for Ryanair
and blog about it to feel the full effect. ;)

A bit off-topic, but I just visited American Airlines site and realized that
they have updated it. In reference to
<http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html>.

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bromley
_"You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior
written consent of Ryanair. Such consent may be withdrawn at any time at
Ryanair’s own discretion."_

I wonder if Google have got written consent to link to Ryanair from their
search results...

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hammock
Suppose someone is found liable in civil court for deep linking to a website
that prohibits it. What kind of damages could the website possibly be entitled
to collect? I'm at a loss.

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mkramlich
websites that forbid linking to them didn't get the memo on how the web works

