Block all search results (dynamic) in robots.txt?
-
I know that google does not want to index "search result" pages for a lot of reasons (dup content, dynamic urls, blah blah). I recently optimized the entire IA of my sites to have search friendly urls, whcih includes search result pages. So, my search result pages changed from:
- /search?12345&productblue=true&id789
to
- /product/search/blue_widgets/womens/large
As a result, google started indexing these pages thinking they were static (no opposition from me :)), but i started getting WMT messages saying they are finding a "high number of urls being indexed" on these sites. Should I just block them altogether, or let it work itself out?
-
You can block the urls which has term "/product/search/" in them. It can be easily done by adding the following to the robots.txt
User-agent: * Disallow: /product/search/ Hope this helps...
-
As you said: The increasing number of pages indexed will dilute the link juice of the entire site.
Can you give more example? Or just a tip where to search for this kind of information?
Thank you.
-
I would agree with BK Search. You want to minimize what Google has to crawl (I know this sounds backwards) so that Google focuses on the pages that you want to rank.
Long term, why would you waste GoogleBot's time on pages that don't matter as much? What if you had an update on a more important page and GoogleBot is too busy indexing this infinite loop of pages.
At this point, I would use the noindex meta tag vs robots.txt so that google will crawl and remove all the urls from the index. Then you can drop it in later into robots.txt so it will stop crawling. Otherwise you may end up with a lot of junk in the index.
-
I might be a little different than some of these answers but I would recommend that you exclude them from getting indexed.
The reasons I would do that are that:
You know it is largely duplicate content and goes down to the same pages as your categories.
Google has stated that they would prefer to not have it indexed.
The increasing number of pages indexed will dilute the link juice of the entire site.
There is also the possibility that people using the url bar of their browser will start to increase the number of pages indexed by a large manner.
A competitor could create thousands of links to these pages and create a huge footprint that is search pages.
And finally, I like having product pages ranking highly if at all possible.
I would do this with both the robots.txt file and the GWMT exclusion on /product/search/ directory
Good Luck!
-
Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered?
Thanks!
-
As a follow-up or further info: Its been about 5 months since the change. I do get some traffic from these indexed pages (not a ton, but enough that i would like to not block if there is no negative impact). The SE interaction seems to be confusion- they index the content, but also recognize that something may not be right. So I am wondering if anyone else has done something similar or is trying this.
Admitidly this is what i wanted the new url structure to do- as an experiment. Just looking for anyone else who has/is doing similar
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
-
Site: search showing funny results
Hi When i do a site: search on my domain the very last result it returns is a URL which is listed as my domain but does not exist on my website. When clicked it redirects to a really spammy page. If im not being clear just let me know, quite hard to explain the situation! Any thoughts to get rid of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheZenAgency0 -
Robots.txt
Hi all, Happy New Year! I want to block certain pages on our site as they are being flagged (according to my Moz Crawl Report) as duplicate content when in fact that isn't strictly true, it is more to do with the problems faced when using a CMS system... Here are some examples of the pages I want to block and underneath will be what I believe to be the correct robots.txt entry... http://www.XYZ.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=viewNewContent&search_app=members&search_app_filters[forums][searchInKey]=&period=today&userMode=&followedItemsOnly= Disallow: /forum/index.php?app=core&module=search http://www.XYZ.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=reports&rcom=gallery&imageId=980&ctyp=image Disallow: /forum/index.php?app=core&module=reports http://www.XYZ.com/forum/index.php?app=forums&module=post§ion=post&do=reply_post&f=146&t=741&qpid=13308 Disallow: /forum/index.php?app=forums&module=post http://www.XYZ.com/forum/gallery/sizes/182-promenade/small/ http://www.XYZ.com/forum/gallery/sizes/182-promenade/large/ Disallow: /forum/gallery/sizes/ Any help \ advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
How to avoid keyword stuffing in dynamic pages?
Our new home page which is in development has been identified as being keyword stuffed for a particular search word. The problem is that the page includes a dynamic feed pulled in from our database. It would be similar to booking.com for example coming up as keyword stuffed for the word hotel. But hotels are their business and so any instance of the word hotel is probably relevant. Our problem is similar. How detrimental would this be for SEO? And does anyone have any ideas how this can be worked round?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | striple0 -
Customer Experience vs Search Result Optimisation
Yes, I know customer experience is king, however, I have a dilema, my site has been live since June 2013 & we get good feedback on site design & easy to follow navigation, however, our rankings arent as good as they could be? For example, the following 2 pages share v similar URLs, but the pages do 2 different jobs & when you get to the site that is easy to see, but my largest Keyword "Over 50 Life Insurance" becomes difficult to target as google sees both pages and splits the results, so I think i must be losing ranking positions? http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Funeral-Planning/Over-50-Life-Insurance.aspx http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Funeral-Planning/Over-50-Life-Insurance/Compare-Over-50s-Life-Insurance.aspx The first page explains the product(s) and the 2nd is the Quote & Compare page, which generates the income. I am currently playing with meta tags, but as yet havent found the right combination! Originally the 2nd page meta tags were focussing on "compare over 50s life insurance" but google still sees "over 50 life insurance" in this phrase, so the results get split. I also had internal anchor text supporting this. What do you think is the best strategy for optimising both pages? Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Is Google applying some customized search results, even when Private Browsing?
I am including a screenshot of a very interesting search result I received while InPrivate Browsing in Google using IE9. I was spot-checking some keywords while private browsing and the first one I searched was "presonus studiolive." Then, I searched a completely unrelated term "communion supplies." I am attaching a screenshot of the search results page I then received from Google. Interesting, no? I can't even begin to wrap my head around the implications of a search results page that mixes results from two completel unrelated terms. Thoughts? 7QNxPHM.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
URL blocked
Hi there, I have recently noticed that we have a link from an authoritative website, however when I looked at the code, it looked like this: <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="http://www.mydomain.com/" title="blocked::http://www.mydomain.com/">keyword</a> You will notice that in the code there is 'blocked::' What is this? has it the same effect as a nofollow tag? Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Block search engines from URLs created by internal search engine?
Hey guys, I've got a question for you all that I've been pondering for a few days now. I'm currently doing an SEO Technical Audit for a large scale directory. One major issue that they are having is that their internal search system (Directory Search) will create a new URL everytime a search query is entered by the user. This creates huge amounts of duplication on the website. I'm wondering if it would be best to block search engines from crawling these URLs entirely with Robots.txt? What do you guys think? Bearing in mind there are probably thousands of these pages already in the Google index? Thanks Kim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Voonie0 -
Advanced search operators
Hi mozzers, Anyone know how to do a yahoo search to return results that meet have a specific URL For example, say I wanted to search for the keyword finance and I only wanted it to return results with the word "business" anywhere in the URL. I have done in the past, but I just cant remember how to do it! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterM220