Last week Dreamwidth implemented a search-your-own-journal feature for paid users and paid communities. So I can search my old posts (but not the comments), but as of right now I can't search other people's journals.

I've never blocked search engines on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth, so I regularly use Google to find old posts in my journal that I want to reread or link back to by searching for "cryptoxin [keyword(s)]". This is particularly valuable for me because I don't have a good tagging system for my posts.

Dreamwidth is also considering implementing site-wide search of public posts as a feature for paid users. They're looking for feedback, including whether to implement it on an opt-in or opt-out basis. One suggestion supported by several commenters for when the feature is rolled is to set the default preference to match each user's setting for offsite search engines. That is, if you've opted to minimize your journal's inclusion in public search engine results (e.g. Google), the assumption would be that you're also opting out of DW's site-wide search unless and until you change your DW site-search preference.

I'm wondering if this assumption is actually true -- that most people's off-site and within-site search preferences will correlate. My impression is that most people whose journals I read have blocked search engine robots for the LJ and DW journals; my impression is that the primary privacy concerns are about reducing the visibility of their journals to people outside of fandom (e.g. coworkers/employers, copyright holders). So that presumably wouldn't be a factor for an intra-DW site-wide search feature, which would be limited to paid DW users. It would be about not wanting other people on DW, including people inside of fandom, to find your posts via search.

Personally, I'd love to be able to search public posts. In recent comments to other people's posts, I've had to dig up links to fan fiction, vids, and recs posts; the lack of searchability makes finding those links harder than it should be. I'd also like a search feature for whenever I see someone make a passing reference to an older story, vid, or post that's not linked, or when I want to go back and find a particular post that I'd read before either on or linked from my friendslist. I can usually find them, but it requires going to the person's journal and looking through the relevant tag, or occasionally sifting through their archive for the relevant month(s), or else trying to find it on delicious.

And when I check out new-to-me shows like Spooks and Sea Patrol, I wish I could find episode reaction posts from people who were watching the episodes when they originally aired. Behold the loneliness of the belated fan!

So what would best describe your searchability preferences? For 'Google search' read 'external search engines'; for sitewide search, it only applies to your public posts, and is only available to other journal users. Sadly, my attempts to create a poll in DW are failing, so let's try a manual version ETA or see next entry for a functional poll:

A. Block Google search AND block sitewide search by other users

B. Block Google search BUT allow sitewide search by other users

C. Allow Google search AND allow sitewide search by other users

D. Allow Google search BUT block sitewide search by other users


Bonus question: if you would opt to block both external and internal searches, are your reasons or privacy concerns the same in both cases, or different?