Privacy Policy: index it/? And where to place it?
-
Hi Everyone,
Two questions, first: should you allow google to index your privacy policy? Second: for a service based site (not e-commerce, not selling anything) should you put the policy in the footer so it's site wide or just on the "contact us" form page?
Best,
Ruben
-
Thanks Jeff!
-
Chris - I wouldn't worry about duplicate content on the privacy policy.
I have, though, seen where people copy-paste from another site, but forget to remove the other company's name. (That's a little embarrassing, though.)
Just my $0.02,
-- Jeff
-
Are there duplicate content concerns? Since a lot of this stuff is boilerplate?
-
Thanks Linda!
-
"If you do plan to engage in a lot of deceptive practices, though, it might be nice to not have these pages cached, so nobody can look back at your older privacy policy (i.e. through the Way Back Machine)."
I laughed at that part, but always good to know just in case.
Thanks Jeff!
Ruben
-
Ruben -
I think it's a wise move to have Google and other search engines index your privacy policy. I'd recommend putting it in the footer of the site. This is a standard part of nearly every website, so I wouldn't worry about including it.
Not including it, though, might raise flags and decrease the amount of trust a search engine places in your Website.
From a consumer perspective, many, many studies in the past have show a direct correlation between having a privacy policy on a site (or simply a link to a privacy policy) next to a form, and increased conversion rates.
My worry if you disable the ability of a search engine to index your privacy policy is that it may hinder this "trusted" mark by a search engine, as it may appear that you are trying to hide.
If you do plan to engage in a lot of deceptive practices, though, it might be nice to not have these pages cached, so nobody can look back at your older privacy policy (i.e. through the Way Back Machine).
One cynical thing to note: whatever you say on your privacy policy (i.e. we will never, ever sell your information), you should abide by what you say. Otherwise, the FTC will come down on you for deceptive practices. That's why most privacy policies are written by lawyers and allow the company to pretty much do whatever they want with the end user's data. And why nobody usually reads them.
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
-
I keep our privacy policy indexed. I figure that if someone is thinking about interacting with us in some way and doesn't happen to notice the link in the footer or the call-to-action boxes, it should be findable in search so that we don't look like we are hiding something. And for the second part of your question, I think having your privacy policy readily accessible helps users feel more secure and that is a good thing, so I would still have it in the footer.
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
-
Mobile-First Indexing New Site monetized with Adsense AMP or not?
I am considering developing a new site monetized with Adsense. I am wondering if it's still worth bothering with AMP, it will take some work to get the functionality I have in mind working on these pages due to the inherent limitations. Has anyone got any insights in terms of current and future benefits of AMP in terms of ranking benefits and Adsense earning potential?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0 -
Magento 2.1 Multi Store / SEO
This is quite technical but I'm hoping a Magento expert can clear this up for me. Currently my company has two websites on separate Opencart platforms. What I'm doing now is building a Magento website and using the multi store function as well as a few modules to combine the two sites, the aim being that the link juice is shared and I can focus my SEO efforts on the one site instead of two, thus reducing my workload while maintaining the benefits. This is the intended layout: www.domain.com www.domain.com/us I have created a sub-folder (not a subdomain) as this seems to be the best way to share link juice between the new, combined sites (as well as 301s from the old, redundant site). At the moment I have created 2 separate websites, stores and store views (see attached) and have configured it according to the Magento guide, so I know that technically this is correct but I need to make sure that I have done it correctly in relation to SEO. Is the sub-folder set up correctly for instance? Currently the only files to populate that sub-folder are a htaccess, error log and index.php (see attached). Also, is there anything I could be missing in relation to SEO within the parameters of what I am trying to achieve? Additionally, only one store view appears in the "change store view" section of the home page. This is causing me to question if I have set it up correctly, because I had assumed both store views would appear even if they were under different websites (attached). OR do I simply use the same website and create two stores and store views? Do I also need to create a separate database for each website/store/store view? I would very much appreciate if someone could help out here. Thank you. In1Gi7t pyfM03y nUQoMz1
Web Design | | moon-boots0 -
Google Indexing Multi-Store Best Practice
Hi Guys, We currently have a main store view and a uk store view setup with a Litespeed Redirect for our website, redirecting UK IP Customers to the UK Store. We recently noticed that we were running into some issues with Google indexing pages from the uk site as well as the main store view. With trying to avoid duplicate content, my question being: What is the best practice for google indexing the UK and Main store views? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Web Design | | centurysafety0 -
Why is my homepage not indexed by Google or Bing
http://www.schoppnutritionclinic.com/ Home page is not indexed by Google or Bing but all other pages are indexed. I know that currently i am missing the robot.TXT file and the sitemap. This is something i am woking on as a possible solution. I would have thought Google/Bing would have still indexed this page regardless of the lack of sitemap/robot.txt files not being present. I attempted to run a fetch and render in Webmaster tools and received a Not Found status.
Web Design | | ChrisSams0 -
No-index part of page
Hi All, I want to copy articles from CNN/Bloomberg/etc and I want to show the content to my users in Lightbox (CSS), but the problem is duplicate content. Do you have any idea how can I no-index part of page/content?
Web Design | | JohnPalmer0 -
Blog vs. News/Editorial Layout?
We're in the coupon blogging space & saw that one of the larger coupon sites move away from the more traditional blog layout: http://thekrazycouponlady.com they now have more of an editorial type layout. Here is another site which is more similar to our layout: http://hip2save.com. So here are my questions: Which layout type do you feel better serves their visitors & why? How does the affect the SEO of the site? How does it affect the advertising revenues? Which layout do you prefer? Is there strategy in this move for the coupon blog, or is this just a preference on how they now display their content? We're making some updates to our design soon & I wanted to get some feedback on the overall direction we take.
Web Design | | seointern0 -
Looking for a Static Blog Roll (Directory) plug in / tool
I am looking to add a static page to my site to allow people to add their site to a 'master directory". I'd like to make this as SEO friendly as possible. Here's it what I would really like to be able to do. 1. Someone visits the page and can either browse the blog directory on that page, or 2. Fill out a short from that has their blog name, url, short description of their blog, their state, country, and maybe the option to upload an image as well. This way people can search by the state / country to find people near by. 3. I'd like the links to be no-follow. 4. I'm not sure if there is an easy way to do this (I think I've seen some plug in's that may be able to do it.) 5. I'm also not sure if there is anything I'm missing here that could make this better. What I don't want is just a long list of links like everyone has on their side bar. I'd like to make it better, more user friendly, more seo friendly, and more helpful than that. Any creative input on how I might do this is appreciated. Thanks. 🙂
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
XML Sitemap that updates daily/weekly?
Hi, I have a sitemap on my site, that updates but it isn't a XML sitemap. See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/sitemap/ I have used some free software to crawl the site and create a sitemap of pages, however I think that if I were to upload the sitemap, it would be out of date as soon as I listed new products on the site, so would need to rerun it. Does anyone know how I can get this to refresh daily or weekly? Or any software that can do it? I have a web firm that are willing to do one, but our relationship is at an all time low and I don't want to hand over £200 for them to do one. Anyone with any ideas or advice? Thanks Will
Web Design | | WillBlackburn0