Google uses crawlers that go through a file called robots.txt that says what endpoints it can visit and what it can’t visit. You can view it here. It will basically go through every endpoint and keep going down until it can’t anymore.
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Can you clarify the meaning of “temporarily” in this case? I’m concerned this will follow in the footsteps of other “SoonTM” changes that have been made in the past. It’s been well over a month and this issue is still ongoing, and the vague wording isn’t doing much to dissuade concerns.
Is there a concrete plan to fix this issue? What’s the timeline? Or is this just a temporary measure to prevent PR disasters during the upcoming IPO? For the removal of such a major source of discovery for my game, I’d really like to get some clarification on what’s being done about this.
Edit: oh nooooo. U.S. gaming platform Roblox to delay IPO until next year | Reuters
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I noticed Roblox was hiding results from search engines months ago and was kind of confused as to why. Many people have stated how this affects discoverability (it doe), but I’m really curious as to what these inconsistencies are. I personally prefer using a search engine over the native Roblox search bar to find games because, well — we all know why.
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It really doesn’t affect discoverability. A lot of scams and people trying to profit off of premium payout will embed tags in games. The the description is part of the metadata that search engines use.
By definition, it does affect discoverability if it isn’t available to search engines. Are you referring to discoverability on the actual Roblox website?
I mean on search engines. It is kinda a yes and no but I leaned toward no. Cause we have in game ads. And you’re most likely already going to find top games, or scams of some sort. And that is the same thing on Roblox. So it really doesn’t affect it.
You also have to weigh in that people use ad blockers - myself included. As for the Roblox game search itself I would much rather be able to Google a game I’m looking for than relying on an unreliable search system.
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I know how meta tags works in regards to SEO. That’s not what I was referring to. My original reply was in regards to how Roblox’s game search isn’t always very reliable and consistent. To that extent pulling Roblox games off of Google searches can affect discoverability for a game if the Roblox search system doesn’t find the game you’re looking for.
My point is, Google searches are less reliable than the website. People fill their games with tags and that gets shown to Google.
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Except nothing of that sort was stated in Roblox’s official response.
“We’re temporarily blocking directories, including /games, from search engines while we address inconsistencies on what you can find on our platform versus off-platform search engines.”
Those included scams and other games of the sort.
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Any ETA on when it will be unblocked?
My games rely heavily on marketing via YouTube videos, where people typically will google the name of the game to find it. Youtubers normally don’t put the game link in their description, so players use Google, just like they would find anything else. Ever since this change, I’ve had far fewer players, and have just been waiting for it to be changed back again. It just so happens that advertisements became a lot worse at the same time, so really any way that I would use before to get an influx of players are no longer effective. Multiple developers I have spoken with find themselves in the same situation and are demotivated because of it.
I understand there are reasons for the change, but I think the fact that this is damaging a lot of games and demotivating developers should be taken into consideration. It would be nice to at least get an ETA to help remove any uncertainty regarding how long “temporarily” is.
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So, searching for games using Google is much faster than using the built-in search bar in Roblox. There are keyboard shortcuts, meaning I can easily control + t to pull up a new tab. I can immediately start typing, and since most games I play are both mildly popular and have pretty unique names (along with adding the word “Roblox” to the end) I can save myself lots of time.
Contrast this with the built-in Roblox search bar: I need to click in a very small area, the frustratingly have to deal with a dropdown before clicking again once I see the game I have found. If you do misclick when searching then you have to repeat the process again except the dropdown frustratingly again shifts order so that I have to look once more to ensure I’ve clicked “Games.”
Can you see now why I really prefer searching for a game on Google? It’s essential and I’d really like it back, along with the point made above on Youtube discoverability and how it hurts developers.
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I don’t know. It may be a while, or never.
That is a BAD thing to do. Google isn’t the best at games like Roblox. It uses bad algorithms with Roblox due to the crap ton of tags people put in their games. It is better to search it. And if you are playing a game that is not popular and you are a youtuber, I HIGHLY recommend you put in the link or else people wont be able to find the game.
An easy fix would be to start going to other platforms. Discord is a great platform because of the more mature audience and how a lot of Roblox-based servers allow for advertising for groups and games. Just because you don’t get as many players doesn’t mean that it is the end of the world. Also, this started WAY back when people started going back to school, so YES, you won’t get as many people in your game.
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This is why google is useful:
For some reason, roblox decided to integrate a filter into the search engine!?!
This makes certain games or groups impossible to find unless you know the owner or someone in the group/game. Before google searches were blocked, you used to be able to find something you were looking for if it was censored in the roblox search engine, now you are helpless.
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Haha ya It also happens in the search for friends
however true, videos will appear instead of the map
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How long is temporary?
Over half a year has passed and my games still have virtually zero presence on search engines. These are the top search results for one of my games (which has accumulated over a billion sessions).
Frankly I’m surprised people are even finding it. A large portion of traffic comes from YouTube and socials - both of which, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t have a Roblox search bar haha. Just makes me wonder how many potential players I’m losing.
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Inspecting roblox.com/robots.txt (the file every site has that is used by search engines to block certain links from appearing) reveals that they actually seem to have re-listed it (/games, /catalog, /library no longer appears), but search engines haven’t quite caught up yet. I don’t know how recently they did this but hopefully it shouldn’t take more than a month for Google and others to get up to date.
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Wow, my game is appearing on Bing! Google soon hopefully
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