Is using splash pages considered cloaking?
-
For example I'm thinking of running people through a squeeze page when they come from search engines (for first time visitors only/cookied) ... example: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
Is it going to hurt SEO? Because basically you are serving a page that is different, than the one displayed in the SERP's.
-
Hi Jeffrey,
I think you'll see that most people are adverse to having some type of intermediate step to take before they see the home page. Can you explain to us a little more of how you envision this to happen technically, and what you're hoping to accomplish with it for your business?
-
Harald,
You might want to view the example that the original poster is using. It's closer to a lightbox effect than the splash screen that either of those two links describe.
-
Hello Jeffrey, I think that using splash pages will definitely hurt the Search Engines & this effects would easily recognized on the SEO.
I short it will affects the websites.
For more details please refer to the below link:
http://www.shimonsandler.com/splash-pages-bad-for-usability-bad-for-seo/
&
http://seofreelancingindia.wordpress.com/category/splash-page/
Thanks.
-
Ok Keri I will make it more clear .
Thanks for your suggestion.
-
Harald, this isn't quite what the user is asking about. The first link is fairly old, and the OP is looking at a different type of technology.
-
It is not a great idea due to the fact that:
-
First of all you're redirecting visitor to a different page then they are suppose to see - that is not a great user experience, which might cost you a high bounce rate (people actually not going any further).
-
Splash pages usually don't contain anything that could help you with the rankings i.e. links with the keywords etc. though obviously your site might have a different splash page.
-
There is a big chance that at some point you will loose the position in the SERPs because the page doesn't actually serve the requested content
My advice - do NOT do it - here's some reading you might find useful: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#2
And how the Crawling and Cookies can work together : http://code.google.com/apis/searchappliance/documentation/50/help_gsa/crawl_cookies.html
-
-
| Hi Jeffrey, |
Splash Pages are the web pages that do not have enough content in them which tell the spiders of he search engines that not to indexed these types of pages & this will results in cloaking & these cause search engines to penalized you.
We know that using these splash pages in our websites would definitely results in loss. Below is link which helps you to know more about using the splash pages
-
Uhhh, I don't know how to answer this without sounding mean, but your site (I don't care how strong it is) is not going to convince Google to make an acception like they do for the President of the United States. You will beat yourself before you ever get started.
What Matt Cutts. He writes the algorithm for Google.
-
In my experience, there is at least a minor ranking hit. If nothing else, the google bot crawls your site alot slower for sure. If its a new site, or a site with a few links... I would definitely not risk it.
-
I don't know if it will hurt SEO but it will totally hurt conversions & sales.
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
-
Our protected pages 302 redirect to a login page if not a member. Is that a problem for SEO?
We have a membership site that has links out in our unprotected pages. If a non-member clicks on these links it sends a 302 redirect to the login / join page. Is this an issue for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | rimix1 -
Will redirecting a logged in user from a public page to an equivalent private page (not visible to google) impact SEO?
Hi, We have public pages that can obviously be visited by our registered members. When they visit these public pages + they are logged in to our site, we want to redirect them to the equivalent (richer) page on the private site e.g. a logged in user visiting /public/contentA will be redirected to /private/contentA Note: Our /public pages are indexed by Google whereas /private pages are excluded. a) will this affect our SEO? b) if not, is 302 the best http status code to use? Cheers
Technical SEO | | bernienabo0 -
Half of my site is private for members only, should I use the Nofollow on these pages?
I'm trying to increase more traffic to my website. However half of my website is for members only and you have to be logged in to see content on those pages. I'm confused on whether I should use "nofollow" on these pages or not.
Technical SEO | | DelcoUSA0 -
Unavoidable duplicate page
Hi, I have an issue where I need to duplicate content on a new site that I am launching. Visitors to the site need to think that product x is part of two different services. e.g. domain.com/service1/product-x domain.com/service2/product-x Re-writing content for product x for each service section is not an option but possibly I could get over that only one product-x page is indexed by search engines. What's the best way to do this? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, My site is being checked for errors by the PRO dashboard thing you get here and some odd duplicate content errors have appeared. Every page has a duplicate because you can see the page and the page/~username so... www.short-hairstyles.com is the same as www.short-hairstyles.com/~wwwshor I don't know if this is a problem or how the crawler found this (i'm sure I have never linked to it). But I'd like to know how to prevent it in case it is a problem if anyone knows please? Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Noindex Pages indexed
I'm having problem that gogole is index my search results pages even though i have added the "noindex" metatag. Is the best thing to block the robot from crawling that file using robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | Tedred0 -
Wrong Page Ranking
Higher-level page with more power getting pushed out by weaker page in the SERPs for an important keyword. I don't care about losing the weaker page. Should I: 404 the weaker page and wait for Google to (hopefully) replace it with the stronger page? 301 the weaker page to the stronger page? NOTE: Due to poor communication between content team and myself, the weak and strong pages have similar title tags (i.e, "lawsuits" and "litigation")
Technical SEO | | LCNetwork0 -
Too many on page links
Hello I have about 800 warnings with this. Example of one url with this problem is: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=asc&order=price I was checking and I think all links are important. But I suppose that if I put a nofollow on the links on the left which are only for navigation purposes I can get rid of these warnings. Any other idea?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10