Manage updates with the Download App
Google jokesters ward off zombies
The search giant injects a little Halloween humor into its robots.txt file's instructions for Web-crawling software.
Google's robots.txt file wards off brains-devouring zombies.
(Credit: CNET News)Google, whose servers constantly crawl the Web, doesn't have anything against spiders. But zombies, well, that's another matter.
Showing some timely techie humor, the search giant updated its robots.txt file for Halloween. For the uninitiated, search engines trying to index Web sites look for robots.txt files for instructions about whether they're permitted access to particular pages.
The Google robots.txt file on Friday begins with the following exclusion:
User-agent: zombies
Disallow: /brains
Most of the time when people do this sort of thing it's called an Easter egg. Is there such a thing as a Halloween egg?
(Via Matt Cutts.)
