Should I block non-informative pages from Google's index?
-
Our site has about 1000 pages indexed, and the vast majority of them are not useful, and/or contain little content. Some of these are:
-Galleries
-Pages of images with no text except for navigation
-Popup windows that contain further information about something but contain no navigation, and sometimes only a couple sentencesMy question is whether or not I should put a noindex in the meta tags.
I think it would be good because the ratio of quality to low quality pages right now is not good at all.
I am apprehensive because if I'm blocking more than half my site from Google, won't Google see that as a suspicious or bad practice?
-
To the spiders, would the content in the lightbox be considered on the page?
-
I would discriminate these pages on the basis of income or search engine traffic rather than use their informativeness.
I have semiinformative pages that pull lots of traffic and make lots of money - and informative pages that make next to nothing.
-
More a technical answer than SEO-specific, but you could place the pop up content in a lightbox similar to your gallery items with a script like http://fancyapps.com/fancybox/, colorbox, etc. These will allow you to lightbox on page content in addition to just photos.
So you could technically have the price table displayed in the page for non-javascript enabled clients, and the lightbox script would show it when clicked, and you wouldn't have to worry about pop-up blockers or having the popup content be a separate page.
-
I know PR shaping is most commonly done with nofollows but the same core principle holds: you don't want the spiders to do something out of fear that you're "diluting" the site's value. Doing it with noindex is just as bad as nofollow, if not worse.
-
When it comes to popups, keep in mind that some users' popup blockers might prevent these from even loading. As is, I don't think it matters much whether you noindex these price list pages or not. You certainly could, as they're not going to appear in any search result, and they're not going to attract links.
I would play with ways to improve the user experience, but putting the large tables on the page probably isn't the way to do that. To me, I think a better option would be (somewhere above the fold) allowing the user to select the type (plain/patched/etc.) quantity, and other variables. They would then get a price quote (as on the bottom of the page), along with a button to continue the checkout process or otherwise continue to the next step. I'd also display the original price per item crossed out, the phrase "bulk discounts" somewhere close, and then the new price per item.
Telling people what they need to do next (it took me a while to find where to buy) and simplifying the pricing at the same time could help a lot. I also noticed that the price quote on the contact page seems to be loading inside the same cramped frame.
-
Hi there,
Sorry I didn't see this when I posted. PR sculpting generally refers to the practice of using internal nofollows - which I'm not a fan of either, not least because it doesn't work. I also agree that pages that users could find useful should generally remain in the index.
-
Thanks for that great information. This is a good example of what I'm taking about:
http://www.stadriemblems.com/scouting/neckerchiefs/index.htm
Under "Plain Neckerchief" click on "view pricelist" or "color chart"
So, you think a better practice would be to just include that pricelist on the same page instead?
-
Hi Marisa,
To determine which pages should be noindexed, first ask yourself first whether a user would want to land on the URL in question. Second, is the URL receiving traffic as an organic landing page right now? Third, does the content serve a purpose to the user? Does it need to exist?
If the answer to all of the above questions is "no," then go ahead and noindex the page. If you answer yes to one of the above, some evaluation is in order. Can you add content, improve the navigation and appearance, or make the page more useful rather than noindexing it?
Generally you can enhance gallery pages for search engines and users by labeling/captioning the images and making sure the alt text is in order. On category pages, add some content, label products, and provide them with a next action.
Do the popups contain useful, non-repeating, or important info? If so, can the content be placed on the page somewhere instead? The only way I would use a popup and noindex it is if the content in the popup is optional and duplicated, such as the often-seen "What's This?" that explains a field or term that is repeated across the site, and each instance makes a new URL.
I've never heard of anyone running into problems with Google for noindexing too much stuff. You're essentially just telling them that the page is not good for users to find. You will, however, tend to improve organic traffic and user experience by making each page useful and adding an appropriate amount of content.
Hope that helps,
Carson
-
I'm not a fan of this (commonly called page rank shaping). First, you're trying to tell Google what to index and what to ignore. Second, how do you know those pages have no value? What if I found an image in your gallery and linked to it off my blog? Now you're missing out on link juice. It might not be viewed as suspicious, but it won't help your site any.
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
-
Any SEO disadvantages with creating pages under a directory page which doesn't exists?
Hi, Let's say we are going to create pages in the URL path www.website.com/directory/sub-pages/. In case this page www.website.com/directory/ doesn't exists or redirected; will the pages created in this URL path like stated above have any issues in-terms of SEO? We will link these pages from somewhere in the website and planning to redirect the /directory/ to homepage. Suggestions please.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Google indexing https sites by default now, where's the Moz blog about it!
Hello and good morning / happy Friday! Last night an article from of all places " Venture Beat " titled " Google Search starts indexing and letting users stream Android apps without matching web content " was sent to me, as I read this I got a bit giddy. Since we had just implemented a full sitewide https cert rather than a cart only ssl. I then quickly searched for other sources to see if this was indeed true, and the writing on the walls seems to indicate so. Google - Google Webmaster Blog! - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2015/12/indexing-https-pages-by-default.html http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-to-prioritize-the-indexing-of-https-pages/147179/ http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-indexing-https-by-default,30781.html https://hacked.com/google-will-begin-indexing-httpsencrypted-pages-default/ https://www.seroundtable.com/google-app-indexing-documentation-updated-21345.html I found it a bit ironic to read about this on mostly unsecured sites. I wanted to hear about the 8 keypoint rules that google will factor in when ranking / indexing https pages from now on, and see what you all felt about this. Google will now begin to index HTTPS equivalents of HTTP web pages, even when the former don’t have any links to them. However, Google will only index an HTTPS URL if it follows these conditions: It doesn’t contain insecure dependencies. It isn’t blocked from crawling by robots.txt. It doesn’t redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page. It doesn’t have a rel="canonical" link to the HTTP page. It doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag. It doesn’t have on-host outlinks to HTTP URLs. The sitemaps lists the HTTPS URL, or doesn’t list the HTTP version of the URL. The server has a valid TLS certificate. One rule that confuses me a bit is : **It doesn’t redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page. ** Does this mean if you just moved over to https from http your site won't pick up the https boost? Since most sites in general have http redirects to https? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | Deacyde0 -
Google is simplifying my meta titles. What does it mean?
Hi Guys. I've noticed that google seems to be simplifying my meta titles in their SERP for some keyword searchs. Should I be worried about this? Perhaps a sign of being a little 'spammy' in my meta titles? Or is Google just aiming to bring up the most relevant looking result? Based on that specific search? Isaac.
Algorithm Updates | | isaac6630 -
Its the 21st April, and my non responsive page is still ranking the same ?
Hi, As you know the new algorithm is due today, can anybody confirm why my site wouldn't appear to be affected as yet? Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | CFCU0 -
Does this mean my pages are ranking better?
In GWT impressions are down 17%, clicks are up 57%. Is it safe to assume that pages are ranking better for my site? We have earned a couple great links in the past month.. 5lDZEUJ
Algorithm Updates | | Theskimonster0 -
Does google index non-public pages ie. members logged in page
hi, I was trying to locate resources on the topics regarding how much the google bot indexes in order to qualify a 'good' site on their engine. For example, our site has many pages that are associated with logged in users and not available to the public until they acquire a login username and password. Although those pages show up in google analytics, they should not be made public in the google index which is what happens. In light of Google trying to qualify a site according to how 'engaged' a user is on the site, I would feel that the activities on those member pages are very important. Can anyone offer suggestions on how Google treats those pages since we are planning to do further SEO optimization of those pages. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jumpdates0 -
Google +1 link on Domain or Page?
Since its release, I've seen Google +1 being used across an entire domain but only reference the root href in the code snippet. At the same time, you see other sites use +1 more naturally with the button being specific to the page you're on. What's your take on this? To clarfiy, do you add: or .. on each page.
Algorithm Updates | | noeltock0 -
Does Google index Wordpress pages with frames
Does Google or other search engines index Wordpress pages that use frames? Here is the site in question: http://www.source-nutrition.com/son/
Algorithm Updates | | BradBorst0