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Is ACAP ahead of the pack?

By James Mullan

A joint standard which has been developed by the publishing industry, working with search engines was launched at the end of last month. The ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) initiative allows online content owners to grant search engines like Google rights to "display" their content in search results. Traditionally websites have used a file called Robots.txt to tell search engines which parts of their sites should be indexed and which shouldn't. Recently there has some discussion whether the Robots.txt file provided sufficient depth and complexity to the rules that could be set. It was from these discussions that the ACAP initiative was born.

What does ACAP mean for content owners?

ACAP is seen as a positive move by some content owners with the owners believing the ultimate outcome will be to make more content available by brining it out from behind subscription firewalls. Content owners are being "encouraged" to implement ACAP, the Times Online recently announced that they had done so.

What does ACAP mean for us?

Information Specialists wont see much change in the first instance as very few search engines including Google have yet to sign up or implement ACAP. What ACAP may mean is that more content will become available via search engines that we wont have access to. Information Specialists should be aware of this and the copyright/legal implications of using this content.

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on December 06, 2007 (boomark / email).