Google Search Indexing Issues for the AT Protocol Ecosystem

Google Search fails to index key AT Protocol resources

Users of the AT Protocol ecosystem have observed that basic queries regarding the protocol—specifically searches for "list of public atproto relays"—often fail to return critical community-maintained directories and documentation. While alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo return specific resources such as firehose.directory, atproto.at/relays, and atproto.wiki, Google often omits these results or provides irrelevant pages.

Technical factors impacting indexability

Several technical and structural reasons may explain why AT Protocol sites are missing from Google's search results:

Robots.txt configurations

Some sites within the ecosystem are not properly configured for crawlers. For example, the robots.txt file for pulsar.feeds.blue returns a 404 error, which can hinder a search engine's ability to index the site correctly. Conversely, sites with valid or empty robots.txt files, such as atproto.wiki, are more likely to be findable via direct search.

Domain authority and site age

Newer websites with low domain authority and limited age are less likely to be prioritized by Google's ranking algorithms. Many AT Protocol community sites are recently created, which may lead Google to categorize them as low-authority sources compared to established platforms.

Keyword ambiguity

There is a potential for keyword collision with existing technical standards. The term "AT" is already associated with the Hayes AT command set, a long-standing telecommunications standard, which may influence how search engines categorize queries containing "AT Protocol."

The role of personalization and search bias

Search results vary significantly between users, which cant be attributed to a single global indexing failure. Factors contributing to this variance include:

• Personalization: Google uses personalized search results based on user history and behavior. Users may see different results than others if Google's algorithm decides a specific result is not relevant to their profile.
• Incognito Mode: Using private browsing is recommended to determine if a result is missing from the index entirely or if it is being filtered out by personalization algorithms.

Community strategies for improving visibility

To bypass indexing issues and increase the visibility of AT Protocol information, community members have suggested the following workarounds:

• Leveraging High-Authority Platforms: Posting information or links to AT Protocol resources on platforms like Reddit, which Google indexes aggressively, can serve as a bridge to the smaller, independent sites.
• Fixing Technical SEO: Site owners must ensure their robots.txt files are correctly configured to allow indexing by Googlebot.

"Tell the people at pulsar.feeds.blue to fix their robots.txt if they want to get indexed."

"Post the info you’re looking for on reddit. Google will index that instead."