Parameter Handling - Nourls Question
-
We're trying to make sense of Google's new parameter handling options and I seem unable to find a good answer to an issue regarding the NoUrl option.
For ex. we have two Urls pointing to the same content:
Ideally, I would want Google to index only the main Url without any parameters, so http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map
To do this, I would set the value No Urls for the zoom, x and y parameters. By doing this do we still get any SEO value from back links that point to the URLs with the parameters, or will Google just ignore them?
-
I think canonicalization is the best option for your case. Make http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map?zoom=2&x=0.518&y=0.3965 canonical tag as http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map. Then google wil show http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map in search results and problem will be solved.
Google will still count backlinks for those url's but if you choose nourl google will not index them again.
If you use canonical tag, all incoming links' juice ,related to that page, collected by main page.
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
-
Best strategy to handle over 100,000 404 errors.
I recently been given a site that has over one-hundred thousand 404 error codes listed in Google Webmasters. It is really odd because according to Google Webmasters, the pages that are linking to these 404 pages are also pages that no longer exist (they are 404 pages themselves). These errors were a result of site migration that had occurred. Appreciate any input on how one might go about auditing and repairing large amounts of 404 errors. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
How can I best handle parameters?
Thank you for your help in advance! I've read a ton of posts on this forum on this subject and while they've been super helpful I still don't feel entirely confident in what the right approach I should take it. Forgive my very obvious noob questions - I'm still learning! The problem: I am launching a site (coursereport.com) which will feature a directory of schools. The directory can be filtered by a handful of fields listed below. The URL for the schools directory will be coursereport.com/schools. The directory can be filtered by a number of fields listed here: Focus (ex: “Data Science”) Cost (ex: “$<5000”) City (ex: “Chicago”) State/Province (ex: “Illinois”) Country (ex: “Canada”) When a filter is applied to the directories page the CMS produces a new page with URLs like these: coursereport.com/schools?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago coursereport.com/schools?cost=$>5000&city=buffalo&state=newyork My questions: 1) Is the above parameter-based approach appropriate? I’ve seen other directory sites that take a different approach (below) that would transform my examples into more “normal” urls. coursereport.com/schools?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago VERSUS coursereport.com/schools/focus/datascience/cost/$<5000/city/chicago (no params at all) 2) Assuming I use either approach above isn't it likely that I will have duplicative content issues? Each filter does change on page content but there could be instance where 2 different URLs with different filters applied could produce identical content (ex: focus=datascience&city=chicago OR focus=datascience&state=illinois). Do I need to specify a canonical URL to solve for that case? I understand at a high level how rel=canonical works, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what versions of the filtered results ought to be specified as the preferred versions. For example, would I just take all of the /schools?focus=X combinations and call that the canonical version within any filtered page that contained other additional parameters like cost or city? Should I be changing page titles for the unique filtered URLs? I read through a few google resources to try to better understand the how to best configure url params via webmaster tools. Is my best bet just to follow the advice on the article below and define the rules for each parameter there and not worry about using rel=canonical ? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687 An assortment of the other stuff I’ve read for reference: http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/seo-clean-urls http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3857-SEO-When-Product-Facets-and-Filters-Fail http://www.searchenginejournal.com/five-steps-to-seo-friendly-site-url-structure/59813/ http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/07/improved-handling-of-urls-with.html
Technical SEO | | alovallo0 -
Question About Using Disqus
I'm thinking about implementing Disqus on my blog. I'd like to know if the Disqus comments are indexed by search engines? It looks like they are displayed using Ajax or jQuery.
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Google place listings and search results- quick question.
Has anybody else noticed that they are ranking better on 'places' yet they have dropped off in the actual search results? We've had no message through webmaster tools. The same seems to have happened to our competitors.
Technical SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)
Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page. Here is what it boils down to: Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out. The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C. While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize. Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another? (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.) OR do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C? OR Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C? Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C. (If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.) Appreciate any and all thoughts on this.
Technical SEO | | JU19850 -
Robots.txt question
Hello, What does the following command mean - User-agent: * Allow: / Does it mean that we are blocking all spiders ? Is Allow supported in robots.txt ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
URL Structure Question
Hey folks, I have a weird problem and currently no idea how to fix it. We have a lot of pages showing up as duplicates although they are the same page, the only difference is the url structure. They seem to show up like: http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page What would I need to do to force the URLs into one format or the other to avoid having that one page counting as two? The same issue pops up with upper and lower case: http://www.example.com/Page and http://www.example.com/page Is there any solution to this or would I need to forward them with 301s or similar? Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0 -
Title Element Too Long Question
I have recently become a pro member of SEOmoz and I've been going through the crawl diagnostics summary in an attempt to fix some of the errors. Currently I have 2,167 pages where the title element is too long. I would like to fix this, but I have certain keywords present on all of the pages that I am ranking first for. I am afraid if I take these words out of my titles it will hurt my rank for those keywords. Is it better to leave the keywords in or remove them to get under the 70 character mark?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0