Thread by @rory096

Charlottesville's City Code essentially doesn't exist on Google.

The Code has 34 chapters, from libraries to noise control. Chapter 22 (Procurement) is indexed. Chapter 34 (Zoning), Article IX, Division 9 is indexed.

That's it. Half of one chapter, 1/65 of another.

Where is it?

1) Go to charlottesville.org
2) Hover over 'Online Services' on the nav bar
3) Hit "City Law and Codes"
4) Let your browser follow 4(!) 302 redirects
5) Click "CLICK HERE"
6) Wait 5 seconds, get js redirected
7) 2 more 302 redirects
8) library.municode.com/va/charlottesv…

Surely there are mirrors, you say — that's just one website.

Nope. Few to zero hits when spot checking samples from the rest of the Code. Lots of council meeting agendas where amendments were proposed and PDFs with old, outdated copies.

charlottesville.org/home/showdocum…

Whole swaths of city ordinances are missing from the internet.

It's not just Cville — @BoulderColorado and @City_of_Irvine are equally absent from search results. @CityofOKC's 2010 code is mirrored on elaws.us. 4500 more municipalities are Municode clients.

Not to knock @MunicodeCorp's platform, once you manage to get there it has an internal search. It seems like a decent UI for browsing municipal codes and tracking changes. I don't think they're doing this on purpose — some pages are indexed and they don't have a robots.txt.

Wherever the blame lies, any of these parties should be able to fix it. Municode should work on its SEO. The city should push them to do so and link it more prominently. @Google should see this as a critical flaw in their crawling coverage. Civic literacy suffers in the meantime.

@dannysullivan @MunicodeCorp @NikuyahWalkerCC @MikeSigner @DrWesBellamy @CvilleCityHall @SmartCville @LyleSollaYates @seantubbs @Suarez_CM @socialistdogmom @cvillenewscom @cvilletomorrow @GooglePubPolicy