If you're looking at some 4.3.x version, or even older, would you consider current to be 4.3.26 or 5.2.3? Needless to say there is quite a bit of a difference between the two.

Generally when using a search engine, you should see links that point to the "current" Spring Framework reference, https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/. If that is not the case it would be useful to know.

For anything else pointing to a very specific version, it's not clear if the intent is to actually point to that branch or not.

In such scenario I would consider the latest stable - 5.2.3 - to be current. If I'm stuck on older version I would be most likely searching explicitly for this version.

In this example, first result links to 5.0.0-build-snapshot, second result to 4.1. There's no easy way to find out which is current just by looking at search results.

Thanks for the example.

Doc pages have a "canonical" header pointing to the "current" version but in this case, the canonical reference is a 404 (oops!). I guess the rules for adding canonical references to requests are brittle because of structural changes. We can and will address that issue, reviewing all rules for canonical links, but we'll also take some further steps.

Re-think SEO strategy for doc pages, e.g. to prevent indexing of older versions, e.g. snapshots and duplicate maintenance versions, but we've some differences of opinion on whether to index "current" only or also major/minor versions. We'll have to do some homework on SEO for multi-version doc pages, but also suggestions or pointers welcome!

Consider drop-down that lists the latest for currently active branches.

SEO updates should ensure you arrive at "current" when coming through a search engine. A drop-down with links to the docs for currently maintained branches would help when following a link to a specific version.

In the mean time, check for the "current" alias in the URL and/or manually switch to it.