Big problem with my new crawl report
-
I am owner of small opencart online store. I installed http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=extension/extension/info&extension_id=6182&filter_search=seo. Today my new crawl report is awful. The number of errors is up by 520 (30 before), up with 1000 (120 before), notices up with 8000 (1000 before). I noticed that the problem is with search. There is a lot duplicate content in search only. What to do ?
-
Thank you again Alan.
Typo fixed.
-
I use Bing search API,
By the way, you want to change from GET to POST, not the other way around.
-
Alan,
Thank you for the great advice. If one has enough control over the eCommerce system, or the internal site search product, to change from GET to POST so these pages act more like real dynamically generated "search pages" than an infinite amount of "landing pages" I think that is a fantastic solution. It would keep merchandisers and others from linking to those pages - because we all know that they will continue to do it even if the SEO pleads on hands and knees for them to stop.
However, I have found it to be the case that most eCommerce businesses (from small mom-n-pop shops to fortune 500 companies) do not have the ability to do this because the internal site search functionality they use is out of their hands. Site search vendors like Endeca and Celebros serving enterprise eCommerce businesses don't typically hand over the keys to the client.
If you know any site search vendors or solutions that allow one to do this it would make a great contribution to this thread if you could share a few of them. I'd definitely look into recommending them in the future!
Thanks again!
-
The problem with PR leaks is that they are scalable, If you are losing 10%, then you get some quality links, 10% of them will be wasted, every effort you do in the future will be discounted by 10%.
There are ways to fix all these problems, for example I would make a search to be POST and not GET so that links to search pages can not be made and therefor search pages will not get indexed.
We work so hard to get good links, why waste them when you do?
-
I have tried different methods to fix this. First-hand experience tells me that oftentimes it is better to just block the paths (assuming there is better navigation on the site) from being crawled or indexed using robots.txt than to use a noindex,follow tag in order to save the pagerank you're sending via internal links. It is very easy for Google to get bogged down crawling around in the internal search results area.
Unless there are lots of links to search pages from top pages on the site, or a big list of search page links from every page (sitewide footer, for example) I really don't think the waste of internal pagerank is noticeable in the rankings, or worth salvaging if it risks sending spiders into a maze or a trap.
Yes, best practice is not to link to pages that you are blocking. In the real world though, search pages can be very useful to visitors, and to merchandisers who don't have the ability to create more targeted sub-sub-sub categories will often use them, and link to them on the site, as landing pages for promotional purposes (emails, PPC, sales...).
Everyone has their own strategies, and all we can do is make recommendations based on our own experience and knowledge. Thanks for helping out with this question Alan. Feel free to elaborate so Anastas has more input to help guide his decision.
-
as long as no one is linking to the search pages including internal links.
-
Hello Anastas,
I agree that you should block the search folder from being indexed. I'm going to assume that nobody is linking to your search pages and that you have other paths (e.g. SEO-friendly navigation, sitemaps...) for search engines to use to access your products).
I don't understand why you have formatted the disallow statement that way, however. Unless I'm missing something (and could be since I don't know what your site is) you only need to do this:
Disallow: /product/search*
And of course after doing this you should test it in GWT to make sure that A: You are blocking the pages you want to block, such as search pages with lots of parameters, and B: You are NOT blocking other pages you don't want to block, such as product pages. Here is more info on where to find the testing tool in GWT if you don't know: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/tbikAxJiIZ4
Let us know how it goes. Good luck.
-
Please I need help
-
I am using opencart. I dont know what to do. Before I had 50 errors, now they are more than 500 after this plug in. The plug in removed the previous errors, but now there are many different errors. I have 2 options:
1. Remove the plug in
2. Do something with new errors - the new errors are only because of search, I have dublicate page content because when you type PDODUCT NAME in search box, there is same content as www.mydomain.com/category1/PRODUCT NAME
Maybe this plug in removed the canonical urls in search or I dont know what.
In robots.txt there is row:
Disallow: /*?route=product/search
The duplicate content is mydomain.com/product/search&filter_tag=XXXXXX
Instead of XXXXX there are many paths.
I decided to add another row in robots.txt:
Disallow: /*?route=product/search&filter_tag=/
Do you thing it is correct or to remove the plug in?
I hope you understand what is the problem.
-
When you no index a page, any links pointing to those pages pour away link juice from you indexed pages. you should never no-index pages IMO
I assume you are using a CMS or some sort of plug in, this is a common cost when you do so. CMS create very untidy code, not good for SEO
-
The urls are: /product/search&filter_tag=%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%B6%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B0
after = there are a lot of combinations. Is it correct to put this in robots.txt
Disallow: /*?route=product/search&filter_tag=/
-
Sholud I disallow search (in robots.txt)?
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
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Duplicate content in Shopify reported by Moz
According to Moz crawl report, there are hundreds of duplicate pages in our Shopify store ewatchsale.com. The main duplicate pages are:
On-Page Optimization | | ycnetpro101
https://ewatchsale.com/collections/seiko-watches?page=2
https://ewatchsale.com/collections/all/brand_seiko
(the canonical page should be https://ewatchsale.com/collections/seiko-watches) https://ewatchsale.com/collections/seiko-watches/gender_mens
(the canonical page should be https://ewatchsale.com/collections/seiko-watches/mens-watches) Also, I want to exclude indexing of pages URLs with "filter parameters" like https://ewatchsale.com/collections/seiko-watches/color_black+mens-watches+price_us-100-200 Shopify advised we can't access our robots.txt file. How can we exclude SE crawling of the page URLs with filter names?
How can we access the robots.txt file?
How can we add canonical code to the preferred collection pages? Which templates and what codes to add? Thanks for your advice in advance!0 -
Missing new pages in Search
Hi, We are on wordpress platform with category permalink structure site.com/category/categoryname. To pull in more SEO traffic, we created pages with structure site.com/categorynameand pulled in all the content from category pages to these new pages followed by applying no-follow on category pages within robots.txt. While it has been a week we applied these changes, we still see old category pages on google search with weird description ( A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt... ) How could we make search results to replace old categories links with the new pages? thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Keyword Density in Body in one page report.
Does anyone know how SEOMOZ look up the keyword frequency in one page report body part.. There are discrepancies between the keyword frequency in body text of SEOMOZ and other free check website.
On-Page Optimization | | RiseSEO0 -
On-Page Report Card with https
Hi, Our site has a 301 redirect to https and I'm getting two different grades for my pages depending upon whether I type: https://www.domain.com (gets an A grade) or www.domain.com (gets a C grade) Is there a setting I need to use to make sure my campaign knows our site is at https? Thank you 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | GroundSix0 -
New bookingsengine url, what would you do?
A client of mine is introducing a new and improved bookingsengine. They're launching it on a different url than the existing one. The existing one needs to stay online a little bit longer for affiliate purposes. The old engine url has a sitelink in the SERPS and ranks well on a few terms. I'm wondering what you would do in this case? They want the new url to rank as quickly as possible also as sitelink of course. Any help greatly appreciated. I have some thoughts of my own of course... 🙂 But to keep the discussion as wide as possible... I'll wait a bit to add m thoughts.
On-Page Optimization | | YannickVeys0 -
How woud you deal with Blog TAGS & CATEGORY listings that are marked a 'duplicate content' in SEOmoz campaign reports?
We're seeing "Duplicate Content" warnings / errors in some of our clients' sites for blog / event calendar tags and category listings. For example the link to http://www.aavawhistlerhotel.com/news/?category=1098 provides all event listings tagged to the category "Whistler Events". The Meta Title and Meta Description for the "Whistler Events" category is the same as another other category listing. We use Umbraco, a .NET CMS, and we're working on adding some custom programming within Umbraco to develop a unique Meta Title and Meta Description for each page using the tag and/or category and post date in each Meta field to make it more "unique". But my question is .... in the REAL WORLD will taking the time to create this programming really positively impact our overall site performance? I understand that while Google, BING, etc are constantly tweaking their algorithms as of now having duplicate content primarily means that this content won't get indexed and there won't be any really 'fatal' penalties for having this content on our site. If we don't find a way to generate unique Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions we could 'no-follow' these links (for tag and category pages) or just not use these within our blogs. I am confused about this. Any insight others have about this and recommendations on what action you would take is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0 -
Should a crawl ever take more than 7 days?
I signed up to the 30 day trial last Saturday, however, as of yet, the crawl diagnostics page still says 'First crawl in progress'. Is this normal? Many thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | danzspas0