> Google and others are introducing a 'rel' attribute value that refers
> to a document that shouldn't be indexed by search engines.  (See 
> http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html  
> for more information on why they're doing this.)

Seems to be semantic nonsense, since the "rel" attribute value usually
"describes the relationship from the current document to the anchor" [1].
There's no existing link type [2] similar to "nofollow", either.

> Should this, or some alternative mechanism that achieves the same
> ends, be included in XHTML 2.0?

Rather some alternative solution than this attempt, which in my opinion
should be ignored.


Regards,
 Jens.


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html#adef-rel 
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#type-links 


-- 
Jens Meiert
Information Architect

http://meiert.com/