PocketGames.ru has excluded itself from all search engines

The site PocketGames.ru , dedicated exclusively to games for mobile devices, completely refused the services of all search engines, having written two lines in robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Here is what is said in the news of PocketGames.ru itself:

In the robot.txt file of the PocketGames.ru site (www.pocketgames.ru) all search engines of the Runet and the Internet were blocked. At the end of the process of “search cleaning” of our materials, you will not find either in Yandex, or Google, or in Rambler or WebAlta, or in Yahoo !, “Aport” and hundreds of other search engines.

Also, the site administration sent out search requests to delete cached site pages. Thus, all project material will be available only on their own website.

Igor Solodov, Development Manager of the PocketGames.ru project, talks about the reasons for making this decision:

The relationship between search engines and content-producing sites today, without exaggeration, is similar to blackmail: “Give us your content, we will include it in our search index and will sell our advertisements to your potential visitors.” This scheme works great - in the direction of the search engine. But the role of sites that create content ultimately boils down to the position of dumb “raw materials appendages,” a free work force that works for a search engine. We are not satisfied with the position of the "raw materials appendage" and after long hesitations, we still decided on such a radical experiment. Taking such a bold decision as blocking Yandex, Google and other search engines, we are aware that we are taking a big risk and for some time the site will experience quite natural difficulties. But on the other hand, we would have to invest in the development of new services, the development of the archive of mobile games and the creation of new content. Content that will be available exclusively on PocketGames.ru.

Refusal to participate in search listings provides an opportunity to create a platform with unique and exclusive content that attracts really interested visitors, who are close and important to the subject of the site. A loyal audience visiting a site of natural interest, without artificial stimulants in the form of search links is the main thing any content site can have. For the sake of it, PocketGames.ru is ready to sacrifice the muddy stream of “search traffic”, directing the released funds to the development of new services and the creation of new, exclusive content.

By the way, the muddy stream of “search traffic” in different years was 50-80%. Most of the traffic was generated by Yandex, after which Rambler and Google followed.

It is also worth noting that earlier PocketGames.ru refused to broadcast news headlines on Yandex.News, after which the number of visitors dropped, but its quality (the number of pages viewed by people, the number of returns, time spent on the site) has greatly increased.