Is linking to search results bad for SEO?
-
If we have pages on our site that link to search results is that a bad thing? Should we set the links to "nofollow"?
-
No it will no be a problem. Even if the search results show duplicate content, to show a sample of pages is fine.
-
Those pages due to the nature of searching for them are the exact same same pages as your normal content just that the url has changed . The best way in my opinion to address this is by using the canonical element you can read more here . if your normal pages have the element embedded in the code any instance of duplicate content should not be an issue.
Hope this helps
-
So you have links to search results on your page and those links are followed and indexed by google. LInking to a search result is not a bad thing per se. Just make sure, that the indexed pages are not to similar (i.e. duplicate content).
An example:
if the indexed page for "widget" (domain.tld/search/widget) and the indexed page for "widgets" (domain.tld/search/widgets) are similar or nearly similar they might be considered duplicate content, resulting in none of them ranking. One way to test this is to use d/c checker or the seomoz campaign. You want at least 20% difference in any combination of pages.
If you manually set these links you might want to check whether the results are different enough. If you don't want these pages to be indexed at all just "follow, noindex" them.
Besides that it's not a problem.
-
Search results on our own domain
-
Hi michelleh,
to what pages specifically are you linking? Google results like http://www.google.com/search?q=query ? Pages on other domains? could you please give some more information?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
Indexation of internal search results from infinite scroll
Hello, I have an issue where we will have a website set up with dynamic (AJAX) result pages based on the selection of certain filters chosen by the user. The result page will have 12 results shown and if the user scrolls down, the page will lazy load (infinite scroll) additional results. So for example, with these filters: Filter A: Size Filter B: Color Filter 😄 Location We could potentially have a page for "Large, Blue, New York" results dynamically generated. My issue is that I want Google to potentially crawl and index all these variations, so that I can have a page that ranks for "Large Blue New York", another page that ranks for "Small Orange Miami" etc. However, I do not need all the products indexed--- just the page with the first set of dynamic results would be enough since the additional products would just be more of the same. In other words, I am trying to get these pages with filters applied indexed and not necessarily get every possible product indexed. Can anyone comment on the best way to Get Google to index all dynamic variations? The proper way of paginating pages? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digi12340 -
Transferring link juice from a canonical URL to an SEO landing page.
I have URLs that I use for SEM ads in Google. The content on those pages is duplicate (affiliate). Those pages also have dynamic parameters which caused lots of duplicate content pages to be indexed. I have put a canonical tag on the Parameter pages to consolidate everything to the canonical URL. Both the canonical URL and the Parameter URLs have links pointing to them. So as it stands now, my canonical URL is still indexed, but the parameter URLs are not. The canonical page is still made up of affiliate (duplicate) content though. I want to create an equivalent SEO landing page with unique content. But I'd like to do two things 1) remove the canonical URL from the index - due to duplicate affiliate content, and 2) transfer the link juice from the canonical URL over to the SEO URL. I'm thinking of adding a meta NoIndex, follow tag to the canonical tag - and internally linking to the new SEO landing page. Does this strategy work? I don't want to lose the link juice on the canonical URL by adding a meta noindex tag to it. Thanks in advance for your advice. Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | partnerf0 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Number of Links for Internal E-commerce Search Pages (and Anchor Text)
Hello! We have an internal search engine for different email, postal, and phone data products on our website (75,000 product pages... calling all direct marketers!), I've noindexed all our dynamic search pages, but I'm wondering how else I can improve these pages. Should I reduce the amount of links on each page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
Currently there are 20 search results per page. " <variable>Mailing List" has been a pretty good source of traffic for our product pages.
Should I change the anchor text for all the product pages listed to include the added long-tail keyword, or would that be extremely spammy, having the word "Mailing List" 20+ times on my page? We have both static and dynamic search pages - here is one of static ones: http://www.consumerbase.com/direct-marketing-mailing-lists.html
My main problem with adding the long tail KWs to the anchor text is that we still want our static search pages indexed.</variable> Thanks!0 -
Empty search results labeled as Soft 404s?
I have a site with faceted search but sometimes when someone drills down too far it ends up with no results. The page and outlined and faceted navigation are still there. The site uses dynamic URLs for the faceted navigation but Google is reporting these no results pages as Soft 404s. How should we handle these? Should we redirect these? Can we return 404 in the status code but still show the no results page they are looking for? Thanks for your responses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
How do I find the links on my site that link to another one of my pages?
I ran IIS Seo toolkit and it found about 40 pages that I have no idea how they exist. What tool can I use to find out what internal link is linking to them so I can fix them or get rid of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Website Restructure - Good or Bad for SEO?
Due to the fact that we aren't in the #1 position, (dropped from #5 to page 2 - You have to love Devs and IT), our heads have hired a SEO Audit/Consultant company to review everything we are doing. I would like to post some of the things they are telling us to do, in which I don't 100% agree with and would like some other professional feedback. Especially since their site isn't marketed very well. http://www.trupanionpetinsurance.com Disclaimer: (this site was a complete nightmare when I started a year and a half ago. Yes, there are many issues that still need to be addressed.) Website Restructure I agree we totally need to restructure our website. I have no idea what the previous SEO guy was thinking. The new SEO company is telling us that the structure is a big part of SEO. I don't believe so, but besides a little loss in 301 juice, is there any other downfalls? Are there any real benefits? Similar question asked the other day (and answered by me): http://www.seomoz.org/q/don-t-want-to-lose-page-rank-what-s-the-best-way-to-restructure-a-url-other-than-a-301-redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trupanion1