Tencent suddenly lifted restrictions on WeChat: Google and Bing can search for public account articles, but Baidu cannot

In the era of mobile Internet, many apps have begun to close their traffic. For example, Tencent's WeChat restricts search engines from indexing their public account articles, and can only be searched by WeChat itself. Today, some netizens found that Tencent has changed. WeChat has lifted the search restrictions. Google and Bing can search public account articles, but Baidu cannot.

According to reports, the robots.txt file on Tencent's WeChat official account website has been deleted. This file is the Robots protocol (also known as crawler protocol, robot protocol, etc.) , and its full name is "Robots Exclusion Protocol". The website uses the Robots protocol to tell search engines which pages can be crawled and which pages cannot be crawled.

I just verified it. If I open it now, the robots.txt file is still there, but the content seems to have changed. Multiple rules allow indexing, so it seems that Tencent has indeed relaxed the restrictions.

As for why the change took place, it is speculated that it is related to the requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments to lift restrictions and blocks on the Internet. After all, WeChat, Alipay, Taobao, etc. must be open to each other, and WeChat public account article searches cannot be monopolized by Tencent's own search.

For the majority of netizens, it is certainly a good thing that Internet giants are gradually relaxing restrictions. Only with competition can there be progress, rather than every platform treating users and traffic as its own private territory.