Thoughts about stub pages - 200 & noindex ok, or 404?
-
With large database/template driven websites it is often possible to get a lot of pages with no content on them.
What are the current thoughts regarding these pages with no content, options;
-
Return a 200 header code with noindex meta tag
-
Return a 404 page & header code
-
Something else?
Thanks
-
-
I would agree with all the comments on how to technically deal with the random pages, but it is a losing battle until you get your website database/templates under control. I once had a similar issue and had to work months to get a solution in place as the website would create all kinds of issues like this.
We had to implement a system so that the creation of these pages would be minimized. I think the issue is that you need to make sure that any random page requests, make sure they get a 404 to start with so that the URL does not get indexed to start with.
That said, all the random URLs that are already indexed, I like the 200 options with the noindex meta tag. My reasons: This is because otherwise with the 404s you get all these error messages that are meaningless in GWT. The noindex also gets the page out of the index. I have seen Google retry 404s on one of our sites, crazy. Ever since Google started showing soft 404s for 301s that redirect many pages to a single URL, I only try to use 301s on more of a one to one basis.
Good luck.
-
Ok, a understand better. I have the same problem with a Site un Drupal, I think is better use a robot.txt to block the empty pages.
These because the link juice that the page transfere is minimum and use extra resources from the server.
If you can't block with robots.txt the noindex,follow meta es ok. But if you see in Analytics that some Landing Pages are www.example.com/product/ {} random_text_here es better use a 404 with redirect 301 to Site Map for user experience.
-
Thanks for the info.
For more information, let me try and explain the scenario a little better.
When using a template to generate all product page on a site, often these are designed in a way so that any URLs of the form "www.example.com/product/{something}" will map to a script called "GenerateProductPage.java" likely based on the rule that anything in the /product/ directory will map there (or .asp etc depending on the language being used).
On the site, there are only going to be links to the actual products that are stored in the DB, so for a user there are no issues there.
But Google manages to find all manor of strange URLs and since they are of the form "www.example.com/product/{random_text_here}" then this also will 'try' and generate a product page. Since there is no actual product in the database called 'random_text_here' then this will result in an empty product page with nothing there except the template navigation, footer links and menus etc.
We currently are doing as you mentioned, by "noindex, follow" the pages for the same reasons you listed.
So the question was; is this ok to do? is this bad to do? (if so why). Is there any harm in doing things the current way? Should we be 404'ig the pages (and what value does this have over the other methods?) etc.
Thanks for your input Carlo as it shows your thoughts are along the same lines as ours.
Has anyone else got anything to add to the information provided?
Thanks
-
Hi, mmm, I not really sure that understand why you have invalid pages, options:
- Products without stock
- Is build based in other database
If you have a product name without content is better a meta noindex, follow because transferred link juice.
But like I say I dont know why these products exist. If you have more info I could help more
-
Thanks for the response.
I guess what I was getting at with the question is when websites are built on flexible platforms and can easily create these pages automatically.
For example, if there was flexible URLs in place whereby URLs such as www.example.com/product/{product_name} all mapped to one script which generated a product page.
So www.example.com/product/{invalid_product_name} would also work and essentially show a blank product page.
The question being, how is the best way to handle these for Google and is there any benefit/harm from either of the methods outlined in the original question.
Has anyone else any thoughts on best ways to handle these scenarios?
Thanks
-
If you know that a Page doesn't have content I recomend:
- A page without content have to response 404.
- If the Page return a 404 make a 301 to Site map.
- In the Site Map use meta noindex, follow to transfer the link juice.
- Eventually you need clean these pages because is bad for users and SEO.
Regards
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
-
HTTPS for form pages?
I am creating a small business website for a friend in Recruitment. It’s very small and mainly just a shop window for the business. There’s no login area for the website, but there are two areas were users can enter information: General contact us form (giving email and phone number) Applying for a job (attaching a resume) The forms are using Ninja Forms – which I believe are secure in passing information. But am I missing anything? Do I need to make these pages https at all? I’m quite new to building sites from scratch. Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | joberts0 -
Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters
Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fayfr0 -
Pages appear fine in browser but 404 error when crawled?
I am working on an eCommerce website that has been written in WordPress with the shop pages in E commerce Plus PHP v6.2.7. All the shop product pages appear to work fine in a browser but 404 errors are returned when the pages are crawled. WMT also returns a 404 error when ‘fetch as Google’ is used. Here is a typical page: http://www.flyingjacket.com/proddetail.php?prod=Hepburn-Jacket Why is this page returning a 404 error when crawled? Please help?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
Miss meta description on 404 page
Hi, My 404 page did not have meta description. Is it an error? Because I run report and seomoz said that a problem. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Pages not being indexed
Hi Moz community! We have a client for whom some of their pages are not ranking at all, although they do seem to be indexed by Google. They are in the real estate sector and this is an example of one: http://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochure/102-iveagh-gardens-crumlin-dublin-12/2289087 In the example above if you search for "102 iveagh gardens crumlin" on Google then they do not rank for that exact URL above - it's a similar one. And this page has been live for quite some time. Anyone got any thoughts on what might be at play here? Kind regards. Gavin
Technical SEO | | IrishTimes0 -
Pages extensions
Hi guys, We're in the process of moving one of our sites to a newer version of the CMS. The new version doesn't support page extensions (.aspx) but we'll keep them for all existing pages (about 8,000) to avoid redirects. The technical team is wondering about the new pages - does it make any difference if the new pages are without extensions, except for usability? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Linking from and to pages
My website, www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com, tells people what campingssites can be found in The Netherlands for recreational purposes. In order for a campingsite to be mentioned on our website we ask them to place a link to our website (either using a text link or image link) and then we make a page for that campsite on our website with in the end a link to ther website, e.g. http://www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com/Minicamping-In-t-Oldambt.html -> they in return link back to us. Since this comes natural will this or won't this be penalized by Google and so on for linkfarming. At this moment we have about 600 camping sites on our website alone linking to us (not all of them) and we are linking to them. Since this can be explained as link trading which is not as good for your ranking as one-way-linking what should be wise? Should i include a nofollow? I already have many links from other sites linking to mine without having to link back, is there anything else i can do with linking to ensure better ranking?
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
I have pages that are showing up as having too many links, yet they are noindexed.
I've got several pages that have "too many on page links" and the pages mentioned have already been noindexed. Do these pages need to be no followed too? Here's one of the pages: http://digisavvy.com/site-map/. There's several pages like this, most of which are category or tag archives, which I've noindexed... Do I need to nofollow these, too?
Technical SEO | | digisavvy0