Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is best practice for "Sorting" URLs to prevent indexing and for best link juice ?
-
We are now introducing 5 links in all our category pages for different sorting options of category listings.
The site has about 100.000 pages and with this change the number of URLs may go up to over 350.000 pages.
Until now google is indexing well our site but I would like to prevent the "sorting URLS" leading to less complete crawling of our core pages, especially since we are planning further huge expansion of pages soon.Apart from blocking the paramter in the search console (which did not really work well for me in the past to prevent indexing) what do you suggest to minimize indexing of these URLs also taking into consideration link juice optimization?
On a technical level the sorting is implemented in a way that the whole page is reloaded, for which may be better options as well.
-
With canonicals, I would not worry about the incoming pages. If the new content is useful and relevant, plus linked to internally, they should do fine in terms of indexation. Use the canonical for now, and once you launch the new pages, well a month after launch, if there are key pages not getting indexed, then you can reassess. The canonical is the right thing to do in this case.
As for link equity, you are right, that is a simplistic view of it. It is actually much more intricate than that, but that's a good basic understanding. However, the canonical is not going to hurt your internal link equity. Those links to the different sorting are navigational in nature and the structure will be repeated throughout the site. Google's algo is good at determining internal, editorial links versus those that are navigational in nature. The navigational links don't impact the strength nearly as much as an editorial link.
My personal belief is that you are worrying about something that isn't going to make an impact on your organic traffic. Ensure the correct canonicals are in place and launch the new content. If that new content has the same issue with sorting, use canonicals there as well and let Google figure it out. "They" have gotten pretty good at identifying what to keep and what not.
If you don't want the sorting pages in there at all, you'll need to do one of the following:
- Noindex, disallow in robots.txt - Rhea Drysdale showed me a few years back that you can do a disallow and noindex in robots. If you do both, Google gets the command to not only noindex the URLs, but also cannot crawl the content.
- Noindex, nofollow using meta robots - This would stop all link equity flow from these pages. If you want to attempt to stop flow to these pages, you'll need to nofollow any links to them. The pages can still be crawled however.
- Noindex, follow - Same as above but internal link equity would still flow. Again, if you want to attempt to cut off link equity to these sorting pages, any links to them would need to be nofollowed.
- Disallow in robots - This would stop them from crawling the content, but the URLs could technically still be indexed.
Personally, I believe trying to manage link equity using nofollow is a waste of time. You more than likely have other things that could be making larger impacts. The choice is yours however and I always recommend testing anything to see if it makes an impact.
-
Kate. The domain has 100.000 pages and will scale to over 1 million unique pages during the next couple of months. I do not want the Sorting URLs have any negative effect on the new indexing of the new 900.000 unique pages in the next months.
Regarding link equity. My simplified understanding of link equity is that if a page has 10 links then each link carries 10% of the total link juice of the page. If now 5 of the 10 links do link to a canonical version of the same page (=sorting URLs), I may be losing out on 50% of the potential link juice the page carries. This is my concern. Therefore my doubt is if I should rather try to hide these sorting URLs from google (same as was also recommended by Rand for facetted navigation pages that one does not consider important for being indexed).
-
Is your issue with crawling or indexing? Those are two separate issues. Why don't you want Google having the canonicals in the index? If you can give me some more insight, I can try to recommend the best option.
And I'm not following your last question. Can you try to ask it another way?
-
Hi Kate, thanks lot. Yes canonical is something we should definetly do and we have implemented.
Still I had the experience in the past that google also indexed lots of canonicalized URLs with near identical content. Any additional step I could do to minimize indexing of these URLs further?
Wouldn't then the basically "self referencing" URLS of sorting links (going to canonicalized versions of the same page) be lost for link equity?
-
This one would need a canonical. For one category page with 5 different sort options, you'd need one canonical URL (one without any sorting or the default sorting) and point all others to that URL using a canonical tag.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
Would that work for your setup? If I understand your situation correctly, this should work. It consolidates link equity and allows Google to choose what needs to be indexed and served.
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 to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google
Hello Mozzers Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination? I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content and of low value to users. I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too. Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
"Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console
Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Internal links and URL shortners
Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Best practice for expandable content
We are in the middle of having new pages added to our website. On our website we will have a information section containing various details about a product, this information will be several paragraphs long. we were wanting to show the first paragraph and have a read more button to show the rest of the content that is hidden. Whats googles view on this, is this bad for seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexogilvie0 -
Best practice for retiring old product pages
We’re a software company. Would someone be able to help me with a basic process for retiring old product pages and re-directing the SEO value to new pages. We are retiring some old products to focus on new products. The new software has much similar functionality to the old software, but has more features. How can we ensure that the new pages get the best start in life? Also, what is the best way of doing this for users? Our plan currently is to: Leave the old pages up initially with a message to the user that the old software has been retired. There will also be a message explaining that the user might be interested in one of our new products and a link to the new pages. When traffic to these pages reduces, then we will delete these pages and re-direct them to the homepage. Has anyone got any recommendations for how we could approach this differently? One idea that I’m considering is to immediately re-direct the old product pages to the new pages. I was wondering if we could then provide a message to the user explaining that the old product has been retired but that the new improved product is available. I’d also be interested in pointing the re-directs to the new product pages that are most relevant rather than the homepage, so that they get the value of the old links. I’ve found in the past that old retirement pages for products can outrank the new pages as until you 301 them then all the links and authority flow to these pages. Any help would be very much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Best Practices for Moving a Sub-Domain to a Sub-Folder
One of my clients is moving their subdomain to a subfolder on their main domain. (ie. blog.example.com to example.com/blog) I just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on some best practices for things we should be doing/looking for when making this move.? ie WMT, .htaccess, 301s etc? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarinPirkey0 -
What is the best URL structure for categories?
A client's site currently uses the URL structure: www.website.com/�tegory%/%postname% Which I think is optimised fairly well, as the categories are keywords being targeted. However, as they are using a category hierarchy, often times the URL looks like this: www.website.com/parent-category/child-category/some-post-titles-are-quite-long-as-they-are-long-tail-terms Best practise often dictates (such as point 3 in this Moz article) that shorter URLs are better for several reasons. So I'm left with a few options: Remove the category from the URL Flatten the category hierarchy Shorten post titles two a word or two - which would hurt my long tail search term traffic. Leave it as it is What do we think is the best route to take? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0