It can be ignored (it's the equivalent to a "keep out" sign on a lawn), but I very much doubt Google et al. (Edit: Oops, Bing et al.) will actually ignore it.
I wonder how much they pay. Reddit profits a lot from showing up on the top for many search queries. I very often do "whatever I'm looking for reddit" (for e.g. product reviews), since the reddit results often provide higher quality information than normal results.
Google sometimes ignore it when it makes sense (ie big bank accidentally adds login page to ignore) or to check for spam activity (in which case google doesn't use their bot user agent)
Smart move actually. The "+reddit" is something more and more people do on google, and on kagi.com reddit results are ranken No. 1 usually. Seems Googles search result quality will drop even further now.
EDIT: Article explains there is a 60M deal from Google using reddits API so that they can continue delivering results from Reddit. Will only hurt smaller search engines, like Kagi :(
"User privacy" my ass. This is a pure lock-in play.
Sorry for the swear words. Reddit was _the_ way I got honest reviews about restaurants, products, and damn near everything, but their search engine was horrible and the platform is very clearly built to drive engagement.
I hate what the Internet has become. I guess it's time to go through the book list I've accumulated over the years.
