Paginated category pages still showing in Google
-
Despite our blog using rel=next and rel=”prev” we’re still finding paginated pages getting impressions in Google, suggesting they are taking up unnecessary crawl budget.
An example is: https://www.theukdomain.uk/seo/page/2/
What steps would you recommend I take to most benefit my sites SEO?
Thanks,
Sam
-
Hi Sam,
Even with that random bombshell announcement from Google about rel=next/prev, I still wouldn't worry about this too much.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else has a different opinion though!
I don't suppose you have explored server logs to validate the claim that Google is being inefficient in its crawling? I don't personally see how having a page 2 indexed equates to this, but understand in general where you are coming from with this!
Kind regards,
Nick
-
I'm always in two minds over what Google says and what actually happens. For example, I've seen a lot of cases of sites cutting out thin pages which have resulted in boosted Organic Visibility.
The paginated pages aren't a major concern as there isn't a lot of them and I would usually focus my time on more impactful activities but with rel=next/prev now depreciated and working through an audit I'm keen to get to a resolution.
Sam
P.S. With had issues with the latest version of Yoast so are awaiting a fix.
-
Hi Sam,
Just had a quick look at the URL in question and noticed you were using Wordpress AND Yoast which is a great choice .
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about page 2 etc being indexed.
This used to be a common SEO practice and an option in Yoast, however it has since been advised as the incorrect thing to do by Google
Please see this post here which covers it with references: https://yoast.com/pagination-seo-best-practices/
I also noted that your site has 1,100 pages indexed in Google. Again, directly referencing something John Mueller recently said... I wouldn't worry too much about crawl budget optimisation: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-crawl-budget-overrated-25825.html
Hope these two links help further your knowledge of SEO, you're asking all the right questions!
I must admit, it's only recently I've let go of my former held assumptions around this...
Kind regards,
Nick
P.S
I notice your version of Yoast is out of date (7.6), I'd get that updated ASAP to the latest (10.0) for additional features and most importantly for security
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
-
Google spending majority of time on NAV bar vs. most important pages
Google is spending 37% of its time crawling the NAV bar which is on every page. Google is spending very little time 1% on the most important pages -- product pages (https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tatcha-violet-c-brightening-serum-20-vitamin-c-10-aha) on www.skinsafeproducts.com . Does anyone know what is going on and how I can change the behavior?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
Does Google give weight to the default measurement units (metric / imperial) on pages?
Hi, We run a series of weather websites that cater for the units (feet, metres, Celsius, Fahrenheight etc.) for the users by means of detecting their geo-location. So users in the US see the site in feet, Fahrenheight and pretty much the rest of the world gets metric units. My concern is that if we view the cached version of our pages as seen by the Googlebot out of Mountain View, California, it shows that our geoIP switch to imperial units has been activated for every location in the World. The question is, does the fact that we appear to cater for countries who use metric units by showing (in Google's eyes) Imperial units by default count against us from an SEO point of view? Thanks in advance for any comments, Nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nickruss0 -
Using Pagination for eComm Reviews Pages
Hi All, An eComm site has product pages where only 10 customer reviews are found in the source code on the product page, no matter how many reviews the product actually has. ALL reviews (including the 10 displayed on the product page) are located on a subdomain, split into many pages dependong on how many reviews a certain product has (some have well over 100 unique reviews). Reviews page: http://reviews.americanmuscle.com/0065-en_us/charcoalamr-18x8-0512-pirelli-stan/american-muscle-wheels-amr-charcoal-wheel-pirelli-tire-kit-18x8-05-14-all-reviews/reviews.htm Corresponding product page: http://www.americanmuscle.com/charcoalamr-18x8-0512-pirelli-stan.html I'm fearing a Panda related problem here, especially since thousands of products have only 1 or two reviews, duplicated on the reviews.americanmuscle.com page and the corresponding product page. I also do not want to lose the unique content on the second and third reviews pages simply by noindexing/canonicaling them to the product page. My question is whether or not I can paginate the reviews.am pages in a way that the product page is "page 1" and the first reviews page is "page 2," second reviews.am page is "page 3" and so forth. Are there issues associated with domain-to-subdomain pagination? Can I utilize the pagination tab in this manner in the first place? There are currently more than 57,000 of these review.americanmuscle.com pages in the index that I would like to clean up so any/all suggestions are appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
Responsive design (Showing diffrent pages(icons) for Mobile/Tablet users)
I'm writing this question just to insure that we are implementing the responsive design correctly.Example of pages: http://www.yamsafer.me/en/united-arab-emirates/abu-dhabi/hotel/beach-rotana-abu-dhabiAnother : http://www.yamsafer.me/enCan we show different pages(Enhanced for mobile users) to mobile/Tablets visitors (sure same content) but with new icons that enhance the User experience for mobile/tablet users , while hiding these items to PC, laptop users?.Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yamsafer.com0 -
Why does Google add my domain as a suffix to page title in SERPS?
Hi, If I do a search in Google - for one our products on our site, our site comes up - but it would appear that google is adding our domain name as a suffix to our title in the results... Anyone else seen this? Can I do anything about it? I would prefer it not to appear. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Why Google scrambles/change our product page titles? And descriptions too?
Here is an interesting issue we are noticing lately: Google is always more scrambling and changing the title of our product pages in the SERPs results. Here is an example: Keyword: "bach arioso sheet music". We are down at the 6th spot, and the shown title is different from what's defined inside the TITLE tag of that page. And that appears often for other keywords/product pages. Why's that? How can we control that? It is hard for us to optimize titles and test CTR and other metrics if Google is showing them differently to the users. Similar issue with the description tag: sometimes Google instead of showing to the users the description tag contents, shows part of the text taken from the page even though the searched keywords are included both in the title and the description tag, and so I can't find justification to show text taken from the page instead... it is quite difficult to understand the motivation beyond all this! Any thoughts are very welcome. Thanks! Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Google Map embed on Contact Us page
Greetings Mozzers, When doing a website, we generally link a Google Map image of the company to the Google Maps in a new tab. Reading other questions made us wonder. Is it better to do the above or is it more beneficial to SEO to have a Google Map embedded on the website. Which I guess means it links Google to the Business in one way? Thanks for any/all responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Will Google Visit Non-Canonicalized Page Again and Return Its Page's Original Ranking?
I have 2 questions about canonicalization. 1. Will Google ever visit Page A again if after it has been canonicalized to Page B? 2. If Google will still visit Page A and found that it is not canonicalizing to Page B already, will the original rankings and traffic of Page A returned to the way before it's canonicalized? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalsources.com0