Adding Orphaned Pages to the Google Index
-
Hey folks,
How do you think Google will treat adding 300K orphaned pages to a 4.5 million page site. The URLs would resolve but there would be no on site navigation to those pages, Google would only know about them through sitemap.xmls.
These pages are super low competition.
The plot thickens, what we are really after is to get 150k real pages back on the site, these pages do have crawlable paths on the site but in order to do that (for technical reasons) we need to push these other 300k orphaned pages live (it's an all or nothing deal)
a) Do you think Google will have a problem with this or just decide to not index some or most these pages since they are orphaned.
b) If these pages will just fall out of the index or not get included, and have no chance of ever accumulating PR anyway since they are not linked to, would it make sense to just noindex them?
c) Should we not submit sitemap.xml files at all, and take our 150k and just ignore these 300k and hope Google ignores them as well since they are orhpaned?
d) If Google is OK with this maybe we should submit the sitemap.xmls and keep an eye on the pages, maybe they will rank and bring us a bit of traffic, but we don't want to do that if it could be an issue with Google.
Thanks for your opinions and if you have any hard evidence either way especially thanks for that info.
-
it's not a strategy, it's due to technical limitations on the dev side. i agree though thanks.
So, I asked this question to a very advanced SEO guru and he said they could be seen as doorways and present some risk and advised against it. That combined with the probability that they will most likely get dropped from Google's index anyway and we know that Google says they want pages to be part of the sites architecture has me leaning towards nofollowing all of them and maybe experiment with allowing 1000 to get indexed and see what happens with them.
Thanks for your input folks
-
I'd go back to the drawing board and rework your strategy.
Do you need additional sites? 150K orphaned pages you want indexed sounds spammy or poor site architecture to me.
-
Yikes, I didn't know the site was that big. Still, if you're afraid of how Google would "react" to those orphaned pages, I'd still test small, regardless of how large your overall site is.
-
Yea 1000 is probably a big enough sample.
10,000 seems like a lot i guess but not when you've got a site with 4.5 million pages.
-
yea submitting sitemap.xml files for 300k pages that are not part of the site seems a bit obnoxious.
-
we definitely want the 150k in the index since they are legitimate pages and linked to on the site. it's the 300k of orphaned ones we have to take along as a package deal that i am worried about. too many orphaned pages for Google.
-
That's a good idea. 10,000 Is still a lot. You could even test fewer than 10,000 pages. Why not try 1,000?
-
Hmmm. I am leaning towards the following solution since I would rather be on the cautious side, maybe this makes sense?
a) we noindex these 300k orphaned pages and do not submit sitemap.xml files
b) we experiment with say 10,000 pages and we allow only those to get indexed and submit sitemap.xml files for them
c) we closely monitor their indexing and ranking performance so we can determine if these are even worth opening up to Google and taking any risk.
-
In my opinion, add the 150k pages in the site map along with the 300k pages, let Google index all the pages and once they are all indexed , you can take a call on de indexing the 150k pages based on their traction.
-
I have no hard evidence, but if it were my site, I would do option C but keep an eye on what happens, and if I noticed anything strange happening, I would implement option B. But if option C makes you nervous, I see no reason you couldn't or shouldn't noindex them right off the bat.
That's merely one person's opinion, however.
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
-
How do we decide which pages to index/de-index? Help for a 250k page site
At Siftery (siftery.com) we have about 250k pages, most of them reflected in our sitemap. Though after submitting a sitemap we started seeing an increase in the number of pages Google indexed, in the past few weeks progress has slowed to a crawl at about 80k pages, and in fact has been coming down very marginally. Due to the nature of the site, a lot of the pages on the site likely look very similar to search engines. We've also broken down our sitemap into an index, so we know that most of the indexation problems are coming from a particular type of page (company profiles). Given these facts below, what do you recommend we do? Should we de-index all of the pages that are not being picked up by the Google index (and are therefore likely seen as low quality)? There seems to be a school of thought that de-indexing "thin" pages improves the ranking potential of the indexed pages. We have plans for enriching and differentiating the pages that are being picked up as thin (Moz itself picks them up as 'duplicate' pages even though they're not. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggiaco-siftery0 -
Google update this wknd or page title issue?
Hi, I've seen a big ranking drop for many major terms, for a particular site, just on Google. This happened Fri 20th or Sat 21st just gone. I don't see any news on an algorithm update over the weekend.I had changed many of the sites major page title protocols 2 weeks ago but a) I would have expected any negative effect before now and not all at once b) the protocols were carefully crafted to avoid traffic drops for major terms and c) i'm seeing traffic drops for keywords that still start at the beginning of the page title d) im seeing drops for some pages which are still using the OLD page titles. I had even tested the protocol on a number of pages in advance to ensure it wouldn't cause problems. As a bit of background - the title protocols were changed to make them more user friendly and less keyword heavy. CTR from search improved so was hoping for better not worse rankings! Ideas, gratefully appreciated.Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Only 4 of my pages have been indexed out of 64 in total
Hi there, I submitted a sitemap for a new 64 page website 6 weeks ago and only a few pages have been indexed. The website shows in Google search but with a large amount of information on the website it should show higher. I have fetched and rendered 30 plus pages on the 9th September and others on the 16th September, today is the 5th October but in Webmaster tools, Google only acknowledge 1 page as indexed. I have checked the robots txt file which shows it is allowed. There are no messages for problems with crawl and no errors showing. The domain is www.urbaneforms.com . Can you offer a suggestion as to why we are not being indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simplyworld0 -
HELP! How do I get Google to value one page over another (older) page that is ranking?
So I have a tactical question and I need mozzers. I'll use widgets as an example: 1- My company used to sell widgets exclusively and we built thousands of useful, branded unique pages that sell widgets. We have thousands of pages that are ranking for widgets.com/brand-widgets-for-sale. (These pages have been live for almost 2 years) 2- We've shifted our focus to now renting widgets. We have about 100 pages focused on renting the same branded widgets. These pages have unique content and photos and can be found at widgets.com/brand-widgets-for-rent. (These pages have been live for about 2-3 months) The problem is that when someone searches just for the brand name, the "for sale" pages dramatically outrank the "for rent" pages. Instead, I want them to find the "for rent" page. I don't want to redirect traffic from the "for sale" pages because someone might still be interested in buying (although as a company, we are super focused on renting). Solutions? "nofollow" the "for sale" pages with the idea that Google will stop indexing "for sale" and start valuing "for rent" over it? Remove "for sale" from sitemap. Help!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vacatia_SEO0 -
Our website scores A but on google we are still on 7th page
Hi all, I have run on page keyword optimizations with exact terminology used to find our company service or our competition on google. We have ranked A, with almost all points complete. I did the same for our main competitor and they ranked F. Then i did page positioning on Google and they get on page 1 fifth line and we get page 7. We have plenty of unique content and extensive website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EMGCSR
Could there be any other reason than reason for this other than backlinks? Many thanks for your help.0 -
Google Map embed on Contact Us page
Greetings Mozzers, When doing a website, we generally link a Google Map image of the company to the Google Maps in a new tab. Reading other questions made us wonder. Is it better to do the above or is it more beneficial to SEO to have a Google Map embedded on the website. Which I guess means it links Google to the Business in one way? Thanks for any/all responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
I am trying to get the new Site map to be picked up by Google for the extended listing as its pulling from the old links and returning 404 errors. How can I get the site listing indexed quickly and have the extended listing get updated to point to the right places. This is the site - http://epaperflip.com/Default.aspx This is the search with the extended listing and some 404's - Broad Match search for "epaperflip"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
Additional page listings under main listing in google
Hi, I'm working on the SEO for a site and I'd love to get the additional page links under our main site link in google, any ideas as to how we can achieve this ? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prongo0