February 28th, 2006
Search for related content soon
Google has modified it’s robots.txt file to include a line which may signal the beginning of a new search feature — similar content search. This innocent looking piece of text ("Disallow: /relcontent") appears related to "Disallow: /relpage/" which has existed in the file for a very long time. Both URL’s produce the same curious message when visiting — "Nothing to see here!".
Disallow: /relpage/
Disallow: /relcontent
Google already shows us a (less than stellar) list of related pages when passed a query like related:blogs.zdnet.com/Google. In contrast to what it does return, I would expect it to show me other blogs with a similar subject matter — like Google Blogoscoped, SEW or Inside Google.
It’s unclear how this speculated feature could differ from the existing "similar pages" functionality – I thought using "related:" was designed to find similar content already.
One possible implementation could benefit users researching fairly broad topics. It may be easier to enter a paragraph or two of known information rather than picking and choosing keywords hoping to strike gold. Does anybody remember Google Sets?
Garett Rogers 
is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the wireless industry.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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