Best way to noindex long dynamic urls?
-
I just got a Mozcrawl back and see lots of errors for overly dynamic urls. The site is a villa rental site that gives users the ability to search by bedroom, amenities, price, etc, so I'm wondering what the best way to keep these types of dynamically generated pages with urls like /property-search-page/?location=any&status=any&type=any&bedrooms=9&bathrooms=any&min-price=any&max-price=any from indexing.
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated : )
-
If you have a page that lists all the villas outside the search results, then you don't lose anything by blocking that folder on the robots.txt
But still, somebody, the guy that wrote the custom theme knows how to do the changes needed.
If you want I can help you with it, for free
Just PM me (I'll need FTP access).
-
Having some trouble... Because the site is Wordpress, which dynamically generates pages, there is no /property-search-page/ nor is there a property-search-page.php in the editor files, so the only option I have is to put disallow: /property-search-page/ in the robots.txt file, correct?
-
You guys rock! I'll try these out tomorrow. Thanks a million.
-
If you have a /all-villas/ page then you should go ahead and noindex the search results as Google Guidelines suggests. You can either do it in the /property-search-page/ or using the robots.txt file.
In the robots.txt, add:
disallow: /property-search-page/
The robots method guarantees that no page inside that folder is indexed or even crawled (including /property-search-page/?whatever).
Or on the page /property-search-page/ you can add the meta noindex as such:
Then check if that meta tag is shown in all search results (just check a couple of them).
Hope that works!
-
Yes, it will. Also looks like custom code, it depends on how the header is coded. But it should work. Test it, if you can. This should solve your problems relatively easily. If nothing works, you can always do a robots.txt deny for /property-search-page/?* pages, but that's not a recommended solution. Try the canonical way to see if it works first.
-
We already have Yoast installed, but the errors are still showing up in the Moz report.
To clarify, let's assume we have another page that lists all the villas (/all-villas/). If I go to the property-search-page php file and canonical=rel it to /all-villas/, will it canonical=rel all /property-search-page/?whatever pages to the /all-villas/ page?
-
Well, that will make a little easier from one side and harder from the other.
You can try installing SEO by Yoast, that will put all the canonical tags for you, however, I think it won't link the search result pages to the canonical page that lists them all.
That might require a little coding.
If there's another page, outside /property-search-page/ folder that lists all villas, then you can disallow that folder in the robots.txt file, and that should fix it. If there isn't, well, then you will need to edit the /property-search-page/ page to use a static canonical tag that points to the page that lists all the villas removing any kind of filtering.
Hope that helps!
-
Thanks for the response. The site is Wordpress - is there an easy way to write some sort of rule that would canonical any of these types of pages to a category page? How would you go about doing that?
-
Thanks for the response. The site is Wordpress - is there an easy way to write some sort of rule that would canonical any of these types of pages to a category page? How would you go about doing that?
-
I agree with Federico one hundred percent. Figure out what your primary SEO friendly URLs are for these kinds of pages and canonical them back to that page.
-
I wouldn't put a noindex meta on them, instead I would consider using a canonical tag pointing to the page that lists all the villas.
Anyway, what programming language are you using?
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
-
I am looking for best way to block a domain from getting indexed ?
We have a website http://www.example.co.uk/ which leads to another domain (https://online.example.co.uk/) when a user clicks,in this case let us assume it to be Apply now button on my website page. We are getting meta data issues in crawler errors from this (https://online.example.co.uk/) domain as we are not targeting any meta content on this particular domain. So we are looking to block this domain from getting indexed to clear this errors & does this effect SERP's of this domain (**https://online.example.co.uk/) **if we use no index tag on this domain.
Technical SEO | | Prasadgotteti0 -
Google Appending Blog URL inbetween my homepage and product page is it issue with base url?
Hi All, Google Appending Blog URL inbetween my homepage and product page. Is it issue or base url or relative url? Can you pls guide me? Looking to both tiny url you will get my point what i am saying. Please help Thanks!
Technical SEO | | amu1230 -
URL is invalid: Why?
Hello everyone, I am currently listing my company on business directories. For some websites however when I add my website URL, it comes up as URL is invalid. What could be the reason for this? I have tried different variations like www., http:// and https://. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | SMCCoachHire
Aqib0 -
Canonical sitemap URL different to website URL architecture
Hi, This may or may not be be an issue, but would like some SEO advice from someone who has a deeper understanding. I'm currently working on a clients site that has a bespoke CMS built by another development agency. The website currently has a sitemap with one link - EG: www.example.com/category/page. This is obviously the page that is indexed in search engines. However the website structure uses www.example.com/page, this isn't indexed in search engines as the links are canonical. The client is also using the second URL structure in all it's off and online advertising, internal links and it's also been picked up by referral sites. I suspect this is not good practice... however I'd like to understand whether there are any negative SEO effectives from this structure? Does Google look at both pages with regard to visits, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. and combine the data OR just use the indexed version? www.example.com/category/page - 63.5% of total pageviews
Technical SEO | | MikeSutcliffe
www.example.com/page - 34.31% of total pageviews Thanks
Mike0 -
Best way to deal with over 1000 pages of duplicate content?
Hi Using the moz tools i have over a 1000 pages of duplicate content. Which is a bit of an issue! 95% of the issues arise from our news and news archive as its been going for sometime now. We upload around 5 full articles a day. The articles have a standalone page but can only be reached by a master archive. The master archive sits in a top level section of the site and shows snippets of the articles, which if a user clicks on them takes them to the full page article. When a news article is added the snippets moves onto the next page, and move through the page as new articles are added. The problem is that the stand alone articles can only be reached via the snippet on the master page and Google is stating this is duplicate content as the snippet is a duplicate of the article. What is the best way to solve this issue? From what i have read using a 'Meta NoIndex' seems to be the answer (not that i know what that is). from what i have read you can only use a canonical tag on a page by page basis so that going to take to long. Thanks Ben
Technical SEO | | benjmoz0 -
"noindex" internal search result urls
Hi, Would applying "noindex" on any page (say internal search pages) or blocking via robots text, skew up the internal site search stats in Google Analytics? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | RaksG0 -
What's the best way to eliminate duplicate page content caused by blog archives?
I (obviously) can't delete the archived pages regardless of how much traffic they do/don't receive. Would you recommend a meta robot or robot.txt file? I'm not sure I'll have access to the root directory so I could be stuck with utilizing a meta robot, correct? Any other suggestions to alleviate this pesky duplicate page content issue?
Technical SEO | | ICM0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0