Resistance to allowing anonymous web access to online help?

[John G <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

Am I the only one who is fighting with product managers and owners to allow
Google and other search engines to index and provide access to our online
help?

All our documentation is online, but we are not allowed to let it be
indexed and made available to search engines. If someone has the URL for a
document or one of its pages, they can access it. The product owners are
afraid that the competition will be able to use our documentation to
potentially reverse engineer our applications.

If you have fought this battle - win or lose - I'd like to hear the
arguments you faced, as well as how you overcame people's objections (if
you indeed, did).

I have found several articles (none within the last 2-3 years) that
advocate making the information publicly available, but none since then. If
you have any, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,


John Garison
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