Block search engines from URLs created by internal search engine?
-
Hey guys,
I've got a question for you all that I've been pondering for a few days now. I'm currently doing an SEO Technical Audit for a large scale directory.
One major issue that they are having is that their internal search system (Directory Search) will create a new URL everytime a search query is entered by the user. This creates huge amounts of duplication on the website.
I'm wondering if it would be best to block search engines from crawling these URLs entirely with Robots.txt?
What do you guys think? Bearing in mind there are probably thousands of these pages already in the Google index?
Thanks
Kim
-
That sounds perfect - if the user-generated URLs are getting enough traffic, make them permanent pages and 301-redirect or canonical. If not, weed them out of the index.
-
Thanks for your reply Dr. Meyers. I think you're probably right.
Yes I'm recommending they define a canonical set of pages that are the most popular searches, categories and locations which can be reached via internal links and we'll get all those duplicates re-directed back to that canonical set.
But for pages that fall outside those categories and locations, I'll recommend a meta-no-index tag.
-
It can be a complicated question on a very large site, but in most cases I'd META NOINDEX those pages. Robots.txt isn't great at removing content that's already been indexed. Admittedly, NOINDEX will take a while to work (virtually any solution will), as Google probably doesn't crawl these pages very often.
Generally, though, the risk of having your index explode with custom search pages is too high for a site like yours (especially post-Panda). I do think blocking those pages somehow is a good bet.
The only exception I would add is if some of the more popular custom searches are getting traffic and/or links. I assume you have a solid internal link structure and other paths to these listings, but if it looks like a few searches (or a few dozen) have attracted traffic and back-links, you'll want to preserve those somehow.
-
Sure, check below and some of the duplication I mean:
Capitalization Duplication
http://yellow.co.nz/yellow+pages/Car+dealer/Auckland+Region
http://yellow.co.nz/yellow+pages/Car+Dealer/Auckland+Region
With a few URL parameters
And with location duplication
http://yellow.co.nz/yellow+pages/Car+Dealer/Auckland
Let me know if you need any more info!
Cheers
Kim
-
Whats the content look like on the new url? Can you give us an example?
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Redirect to url with parameter
I have a wiki (wiki 1) where many of the pages are well index in google. Because of a product change I had to create a new wiki (wiki 2) for the new version of my product. Now that most of my customers are using the new version of my product I like to redirect the user from wiki 1 to wiki 2. An example of a redirect could be from wiki1.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen to wiki2.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen. Because of a technical issue the url I redirect to, needs to have a parameter like "?" so the example will be wiki2.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen? Will the search engines see it as I have two pages with same content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Debitoor
wiki2.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen
and
wiki2.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen? And will the SEO juice from wiki1.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen be transfered to wiki2.website.com/how_to_build_kitchen?0 -
URL Optimisation Dilemma
First of all, I fully appreciate that I may be over analysing this, so feel free to highlight if you think I’m going overboard on this one. I’m currently trying to optimise the URLs for a group of new pages that we have recently launched. I would usually err on the side of leaving the urls as they are so that any incoming links are not diluted through the 301 re-direct. In this case, however, there are very few links to these pages, so I don’t think that changing URLs will harm them. My main question is between short URLs vs. long URLs (I have already read Dr. Pete’s post on this). Note: the URLs I have listed below are not the actual URLs, but very similar examples that I have created. The URLs currently exist in a similar format to the examples below: http://www.company.com/products/dlm/hire-ca My first response was that we could put a few descriptive keywords in the url, with something like the following: http://www.company/products/debt-lifecycle-management/hire-collection-agents - I’m worried though that the URL will get too long for any pages sitting under this. As a compromise, I am considering the following: http://www.company/products/dlm/hire-collection-agents My feeling is that the second approach will give the best balance between having the keywords for the products and trying to ensure good user experience. My only concern is whether the /dlm/ category page would suffer slightly, but this would have ‘debt-lifecycle-management’ in the title tag. Does this sound like a good approach to people? Or do you think I’m being a little obsessive about this? Any help would be appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Blog Not Ranking Well at All in Search Engines, Need Help!
Hi Mozers, Need some help on a CMS I've been working with over the last year. The CMS is built by a team of guys here in Washington State. Basically, I'm having issues with clients content on the blog system not getting ranking correctly at all. Here's a few problems I've noticed: Could you confirm and scale these problems based upon being, "not a problem" "a problem" and "critical must fix" 1. The title tag is pulling from the title of the article which is also automatically generating a URL with underscores instead of dashes. Is having a duplicate URL, Title, and Title tag spammy looking to search engines? Are underscores on long URL's confusing google? Where shorter one's are fine (i.e. domain/i_pad/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keith-Eneix
(i.e.http://www.ductvacnw.com/blog/archives/2013/05/20/5_reasons_to_hire_a_professional_to_clean_your_air_ducts_and_vents), 2. The CMS is resolving all URL's with a canonical instead of a 301 redirect (I've told webmaster tools which preferred url should be indexed). Does using a canonical over a 301 redirect cause any confusion with Google? Is one better practice then the other? 3. The H1 tags on the blog pull from "blog category" instead of the title of the blog post. Is this is a problem? 4. The URl's are quite long with the added "archives/2013/05/20/5". Does this cause problems by pushing the main target keyword further away from the domain name? 5. I'm also noticing the blog post is actually not part of the breadcrumbs where we normally would expect that to populate after the blog category name, Problem? These are some of the things I've noticed and need clarification on. If you see anything else please let me know?0 -
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 -
Need Perfect URLs
I'm redesigning a site's structure from the ground up, and am having issues with the URLs. I'd love to have them be perfect, but kept finding conflicting advice online. 1. For my services blog, is it best to have it set up like www.example.com/services/keyword or
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stryde
www.example.com/keyword There seems to be conflicting advice as to keep it short and keep the keyword as far to the left as possible, but also that including the word services would help with long tail phrases and site organization. 2. For my blog section, is it best to have it set up like
www.example.com/blog/keyword or
www.example.com/keyword or
www.example.com/blog-post-title-with**-keyword**-in-it It's similar to the first question, but also adds the question of including the entire post title in the URL or just the keyword. Your help would be greatly appreciated!1 -
Help with creating a widget
I would like to create a widget that I can give to other website owners to place on their blog. Obviously the point of doing this is to get backlinks. The widget is a simple calculator. (Think of it like a mortgage calculator). I see that there are two ways of creating widgets: 1. Javascript 2. Iframe I've been reading this excellent tutorial on building a widget using javascript and jquery:http://alexmarandon.com/articles/web_widget_jquery/. However, with my limited knowledge of javascript it's going over my head. I understand that if I offer a widget that is in an iframe that the links don't get counted as backlinks, but rather as links from my own site. But, what if I offered code like this: <iframe src="http://www.mysite.com" width="300" height="250"></iframe> This tool was provided by MySite Would that be helpful to me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0