Will blocking urls in robots.txt void out any backlink benefits? - I'll explain...
-
Ok...
So I add tracking parameters to some of my social media campaigns but block those parameters via robots.txt. This helps avoid duplicate content issues (Yes, I do also have correct canonical tags added)... but my question is -- Does this cause me to miss out on any backlink magic coming my way from these articles, posts or links?
Example url: www.mysite.com/subject/?tracking-info-goes-here-1234
- Canonical tag is: www.mysite.com/subject/
- I'm blocking anything with "?tracking-info-goes-here" via robots.txt
- The url with the tracking info of course IS NOT indexed in Google but IT IS indexed without the tracking parameters.
What are your thoughts?
- Should I nix the robots.txt stuff since I already have the canonical tag in place?
- Do you think I'm getting the backlink "juice" from all the links with the tracking parameter?
What would you do?
Why?
Are you sure?
-
Thanks Guys...
Yeah, I figure that's the right path to take based on what we know... But I love to hear others chime in so I can blame it all on you if something goes wrong - ha!
Another Note: Do you think this will cause some kind of unnatural anomaly when the robots.txt file is edited? All of a sudden these links will now be counted (we assume).
It's likely the answer is no because Google still knows about the links.. they just don't count them - but still thought I'd throw that thought out there.
-
I agree with what Andrea wrote above - just one additional point - blocking a file via robots.txt doesn't prevent the search engine from not indexing the page. It just prevents the search engine from crawling the page and seeing the content on the page. The page may very well still show up in the index - you'll just see a snippet that your robots.txt file is preventing google from crawling the site and caching it and providing a snippet or preview. If you have canonical tags put in place properly, remove the block on the parameters in your robots.txt and let the engines do things the right way and not have to worry about this question.
-
If you block with robots.txt link juice can't get passed along. If your canonicals are good, then ideally you wouldn't need the robots. Also, it really removes value of the social media postings.
So, to your question, if you have the tracking parameter blocked via robots, then no, I don't think you are getting the link juice.
http://www.rickrduncan.com/robots-txt-file-explained
When I want link juice passed on but want to avoid duplicate content, I'm more a fan of the no index, follow tags and using canonicals where it makes sense, too. But since you say your URLs with the parameters aren't being indexed then you must be using tags anyway to make that happen and not just relying on robots.
To your point of "are you sure":
http://www.evergreensearch.com/minimum-viable-seo-8-ways-to-get-startup-seo-right/
(I do like to cite sources - there's so many great articles out there!)
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
-
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links? which one is better to rank a website? I am looking for help for one of my website vacuum cleaners
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hshajjajsjsj3880 -
Setting country specific top level domain as alias - will site benefit from TLDs authority?
I have a host of sites that follow a top level domain strategy. For each local site they will be on the top level domain but with their country-languages prefix as the subdirectory. Such as below: example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gracejo
example.com/uk-en
example.com/sg-en
example.com/de-de Each local site being on the TLD will benefit them in terms of SEO and it makes it easier to have one strategy. My question however, if the Netherlands comes on board, they would generally have example.com/nl-en. However they want their primary domain as examplenetherlands.nl and the TLD (example.com/nl-en) set as an alias/secondary domain that redirects to the primary. Will they benefit from any SEO if the TLD is not the primary address?0 -
Backlink audit - anyone know of a good tool for manually checking backlinks?
Hi all, I'm looking at how to handle backlinks on a site, and am seeking a tool into which I can manually paste backlinks - is there a good backlink audit tool that offers this functionality? Please let me know! Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Robots.txt Allowed
Hello all, We want to block something that has the following at the end: http://www.domain.com/category/product/some+demo+-text-+example--writing+here So I was wondering if doing: /*example--writing+here would work?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Disavow backlinks
Is there any benefit in requesting manual removal over using the Google disavow file? Or is it just extra work for little result. I.e. is it better to just disavow straightaway and not mess around? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Avoiding Duplicate Content with Used Car Listings Database: Robots.txt vs Noindex vs Hash URLs (Help!)
Hi Guys, We have developed a plugin that allows us to display used vehicle listings from a centralized, third-party database. The functionality works similar to autotrader.com or cargurus.com, and there are two primary components: 1. Vehicle Listings Pages: this is the page where the user can use various filters to narrow the vehicle listings to find the vehicle they want.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | browndoginteractive
2. Vehicle Details Pages: this is the page where the user actually views the details about said vehicle. It is served up via Ajax, in a dialog box on the Vehicle Listings Pages. Example functionality: http://screencast.com/t/kArKm4tBo The Vehicle Listings pages (#1), we do want indexed and to rank. These pages have additional content besides the vehicle listings themselves, and those results are randomized or sliced/diced in different and unique ways. They're also updated twice per day. We do not want to index #2, the Vehicle Details pages, as these pages appear and disappear all of the time, based on dealer inventory, and don't have much value in the SERPs. Additionally, other sites such as autotrader.com, Yahoo Autos, and others draw from this same database, so we're worried about duplicate content. For instance, entering a snippet of dealer-provided content for one specific listing that Google indexed yielded 8,200+ results: Example Google query. We did not originally think that Google would even be able to index these pages, as they are served up via Ajax. However, it seems we were wrong, as Google has already begun indexing them. Not only is duplicate content an issue, but these pages are not meant for visitors to navigate to directly! If a user were to navigate to the url directly, from the SERPs, they would see a page that isn't styled right. Now we have to determine the right solution to keep these pages out of the index: robots.txt, noindex meta tags, or hash (#) internal links. Robots.txt Advantages: Super easy to implement Conserves crawl budget for large sites Ensures crawler doesn't get stuck. After all, if our website only has 500 pages that we really want indexed and ranked, and vehicle details pages constitute another 1,000,000,000 pages, it doesn't seem to make sense to make Googlebot crawl all of those pages. Robots.txt Disadvantages: Doesn't prevent pages from being indexed, as we've seen, probably because there are internal links to these pages. We could nofollow these internal links, thereby minimizing indexation, but this would lead to each 10-25 noindex internal links on each Vehicle Listings page (will Google think we're pagerank sculpting?) Noindex Advantages: Does prevent vehicle details pages from being indexed Allows ALL pages to be crawled (advantage?) Noindex Disadvantages: Difficult to implement (vehicle details pages are served using ajax, so they have no tag. Solution would have to involve X-Robots-Tag HTTP header and Apache, sending a noindex tag based on querystring variables, similar to this stackoverflow solution. This means the plugin functionality is no longer self-contained, and some hosts may not allow these types of Apache rewrites (as I understand it) Forces (or rather allows) Googlebot to crawl hundreds of thousands of noindex pages. I say "force" because of the crawl budget required. Crawler could get stuck/lost in so many pages, and my not like crawling a site with 1,000,000,000 pages, 99.9% of which are noindexed. Cannot be used in conjunction with robots.txt. After all, crawler never reads noindex meta tag if blocked by robots.txt Hash (#) URL Advantages: By using for links on Vehicle Listing pages to Vehicle Details pages (such as "Contact Seller" buttons), coupled with Javascript, crawler won't be able to follow/crawl these links. Best of both worlds: crawl budget isn't overtaxed by thousands of noindex pages, and internal links used to index robots.txt-disallowed pages are gone. Accomplishes same thing as "nofollowing" these links, but without looking like pagerank sculpting (?) Does not require complex Apache stuff Hash (#) URL Disdvantages: Is Google suspicious of sites with (some) internal links structured like this, since they can't crawl/follow them? Initially, we implemented robots.txt--the "sledgehammer solution." We figured that we'd have a happier crawler this way, as it wouldn't have to crawl zillions of partially duplicate vehicle details pages, and we wanted it to be like these pages didn't even exist. However, Google seems to be indexing many of these pages anyway, probably based on internal links pointing to them. We could nofollow the links pointing to these pages, but we don't want it to look like we're pagerank sculpting or something like that. If we implement noindex on these pages (and doing so is a difficult task itself), then we will be certain these pages aren't indexed. However, to do so we will have to remove the robots.txt disallowal, in order to let the crawler read the noindex tag on these pages. Intuitively, it doesn't make sense to me to make googlebot crawl zillions of vehicle details pages, all of which are noindexed, and it could easily get stuck/lost/etc. It seems like a waste of resources, and in some shadowy way bad for SEO. My developers are pushing for the third solution: using the hash URLs. This works on all hosts and keeps all functionality in the plugin self-contained (unlike noindex), and conserves crawl budget while keeping vehicle details page out of the index (unlike robots.txt). But I don't want Google to slap us 6-12 months from now because it doesn't like links like these (). Any thoughts or advice you guys have would be hugely appreciated, as I've been going in circles, circles, circles on this for a couple of days now. Also, I can provide a test site URL if you'd like to see the functionality in action.0 -
Anyone managed to change 'At a glance:' in local search results
On Google's local search results, i.e when the 'Google places' data is displayed along with the map on the right hand side of the search results, there is also an element 'At a glance:'
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DeanAndrews
The data that if being displayed is from some years ago and the client would if possible like it to reflect there current services, which they have been providing for some five years. According to Google support here - http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1344353 this cannot be changed, they say 'Can I edit a listing’s descriptive terms or suggest a new one?
No; the terms are not reviewed, curated, or edited. They come from an algorithm, and we do not help that algorithm figure it out. ' My question is has anyone successfully influenced this data and if so how.0 -
Disallow my store in robots.txt?
Should I disallow my store directory in robots.txt? Here is the URL: https://www.stdtime.com/store/ Here are my reasons for suggesting this: SEOMOZ finds crawl "errors" in there that I don't care about I don't think I care if the search engines index those pages I only have one product, and it is not an impulse buy My product has a 60 day sales cycle, so price is less important than features
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raywhite0