[fauigerzigerk]

I understand that, but I think there are good reasons why we shouldn't always act in the narrowest sense of our self interest (provided we have enough financial wiggle room).

A search monopoly is not good for website owners. It makes us very dependent on the whims of that monopolist.

If you block all crawlers that don't already have a large market share and send back a lot of traffic, you're killing any possibility for new competitors to get a foot in the door.

Also, you're killing any chance for something unexpected to happen, such as someone having a great idea based on crawled data that could change all our lives for the better without ever sending traffic to your site.

Now, I'm not telling you what you can and cannot afford. If crawlers cost me a ton of money that I don't have I would certainly act exactly like you suggested.

[sydd]

> It makes us very dependent on the whims of that monopolist.

Very true. Only allow Google and you are helping them to build their monopoly. And if they have full monopoly they do what they want - including asking you money to be included in the search results.

[Spivak]

I can't even imagine how many businesses would be extatic about the ability to do this. Might as well cut out the SEO middleman.