I just found something weird I can't explain, so maybe you guys can help me out.
-
I just found something weird I can't explain, so maybe you guys can help me out.
In Google http://www.google.nl/#hl=nl&q=internet. The number 3 result is a big telecom provider in the Netherland called Ziggo. The ranking URL is https://www.ziggo.nl/producten/internet/. However if you click on it you'll be directed to https://www.ziggo.nl/#producten/internet/
HttpFox in FF however is not showing any redirects. Just a 200 status code.
The URL https://www.ziggo.nl/#producten/internet/ contains a hash, so the canonical URL should be https://www.ziggo.nl/. I can understand that. But why is Google showing the title and description of https://www.ziggo.nl/producten/internet/, when the canonical URL clearly is https://www.ziggo.nl/?
Can anyone confirm my guess that Google is using the bulk SEO value (link juice/authority) of the homepage at https://www.ziggo.nl/ because of the hash, but it's using the relevant content of https://www.ziggo.nl/producten/internet/ resulting in a top position for the keyword "internet".
-
The site you've pointed to uses ajax to load its content. When the page loads there's a javascript snippet which takes over and adds the # to the page (hence why you're not seeing it as a httpd header). If you click on any other link you'll see that the base URL stays the same with some extra parameters on the end.
There are potential crawling issues with this and a number of fixes (some Google documentation here, although this isn't the fix that the site in question is using: http://code.google.com/intl/en-US/web/ajaxcrawling/).
So, in short, there's nothing fishy going on - it's just good old ajax content loading
- Matt
-
This is actually a fairly crude attempt of loading AJAX content. I say 'crude' because it's not quite using Google's documented AJAX protocol using the hashbang (#!). There was an SEOmoz post about Google's protocol a while back that had some good examples:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
For this specific website, there actually is a JavaScript redirect involved. The original URL will load, then some JS will do some work and eventually do a document.location.replace() to do the redirect to the URL with the hash. As far as GoogleBot is concerned it won't necessarily do the redirect and will index the original page.
One thing I want to caution is to again remember that this site is not exactly adhering to Google's recommendations on AJAX content. Coupled with the fact that there is a JS redirect going on I would say that there might be a risk of cloaking. On the front end, the content looks the same and I would kinda hope that Google would just treat this scenario similar to their hashbang solution because this site is not intending to do some tricky stuff here. But we can't trust that Google will always give a free pass.
-
This looks more like a dynamic site using AJAX, rather than anchors in the page like you're thinking.
See: http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started.html
No funny stuff. The page you see is the page google intended to show you, with all the SEO value for the page itself being responsible for its spot in the SERPs.
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
-
I'm struggling to understand (and fix) why I'm getting a 404 error. The URL includes this "%5Bnull%20id=43484%5D" but I cannot find that anywhere in the referring URL. Does anyone know why please? Thanks
Can you help with how to fix this 404 error please? It appears that I have a redirect from one page to the other, although the referring page URL works, but it appears to be linking to another URL with this code at the end of the the URL - %5Bnull%20id=43484%5D that I'm struggling to find and fix. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Nichole.wynter20200 -
No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag
Pages on my site show No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag. However, when I inspect the pages html, it does not show noindex. In fact, it shows index, follow. Majority of pages show the error and are not indexed by Google...Not sure why this is happening. The page below in search console shows the error above...
Technical SEO | | Sean_White_Consult0 -
What to do about spam links I didn't create?
I have dropped in rankings 3-5 points over the past 6 months and have been trying to figure out why. One thing I found was a ton of my pictures on a image net ring. I obviously didn't put those photos there or give permission to use them. It looks like an offshore website. How do we deal with these type of bad links?
Technical SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Content in Accordion doesn't rank as well as Content in Text box?
Does content rank better in a full view text layout, rather than in a clickable accordion? I read somewhere because users need to click into an accordion it may not rank as well, as it may be considered hidden on the page - is this true? accordion example: see features: https://www.workday.com/en-us/applications/student.html
Technical SEO | | DigitalCRO1 -
Landing pages showing up as HTTPS when we haven't made the switch
Hi Moz Community, Recently our tech team has been taking steps to switch our site from http to https. The tech team has looked at all SEO redirect requirements and we're confident about this switch, we're not planning to roll anything out until a month from now. However, I recently noticed a few https versions of our landing pages showing up in search. We haven't pushed any changes out to production yet so this shouldn't be happening. Not all of the landing pages are https, only a select few and I can't see a pattern. This is messing up our GA and Search Console tracking since we haven't fully set up https tracking yet because we were not expecting some of these pages to change. HTTPS has always been supported on our site but never indexed so it's never shown up in the search results. I looked at our current site and it looks like landing page canonicals are already pointing to their https version, this may be the problem. Anyone have any other ideas?
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
How to handle pages I can't delete?
Hello Mozzers, I am using wordpress and I have a small problem. I have two sites, I don't want but the dev of the theme told me I can't delete them. /portfolio-items/ /faq-items/ The dev said he can't find a way to delete it because these pages just list faqs/portfolio posts. I don't have any of these posts so basically what I have are two sites with just the title "Portfolio items" and "FAQ Items". Furthermore the dev said these sites are auto-generated so he can't find a way to remove them. I mean I don't believe that it's impossible, but if it is how should I handle them? They are indexed by search engines, should I remove them from the index and block them from robots.txt? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
'External nofollow' in a robots meta tag? (advertorial links)
I believe this has never worked? It'd be an easy way of preventing any penalties from Google's recent crackdown on paid links via advertorials. When it's not possible to nofollow each external link individually, what are people doing? Nofollowing and/or noindexing the whole page?
Technical SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Help With Analytics Data
Hello, I'm seeing the following Analytics data for some of my keywords: Multiple Visits Pages/Visit: 1 Avg Visit Duration: 00:00 % New Visits: 100% Bounce Rate: 100% The data is the same on all "affected keywords". What is going on and how do I fix it? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | AWCthreads0