Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Can I still monitor noindex, nofollow pages with Google Analytics?
I have a private/login site where all pages are noindex, nofollow. Can I still monitor external site links with Google Analytics?
Technical SEO | | jasmine.silver0 -
Thoughts on Botify?
Has anyone used Botify? Is this type of software necessary for a site with under 5K pages?
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
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 -
Blog Page Titles - Page 1, Page 2 etc.
Hi All, I have a couple of crawl errors coming up in MOZ that I am trying to fix. They are duplicate page title issues with my blog area. For example we have a URL of www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/1 and as we have quite a few blog posts they get put onto another page, example www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/2 both of these urls have the same heading, title, meta description etc. I was just wondering if this was an actual SEO problem or not and if there is a way to fix it. I am using Wordpress for reference but I can't see anywhere to access the settings of these pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Low page impressions
Hey there MOZ Geniuses; While checking my webmaster data I noticed that almost all my Google impressions are generated by the home page, most other content pages are showing virtually no impression data <50 (the home page is showing around 1500 - a couple of the pages are in the 150-200 range). the site has been up for about 8 months now. Traffic on average is about 500 visitors, but I'm seeing very little entry other then the home page. Checking the number Sitemap section 27 of 30 are index Webmaster tools are not reporting errors Webmaster keyword impressions are also extremely low 164 keywords with the highest impression count of 79 and dropping from there. MOZ is show very few minor issues although it says that it crawled 10k pages? -- we only have 30 or so. The answer seems obvious, Google is not showing my content ... the question is why and what steps can I take to analyze this? Could there be a possibility of some type of penalty? I welcome all your suggestions: The site is www.calibersi.com
Technical SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
Should i index or noindex a contact page
Im wondering if i should noindex the contact page im doing SEO for a website just wondering if by noindexing the contact page would it help SEO or hurt SEO for that website
Technical SEO | | aronwp0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Splitting Page Authority with two URLs for the same page.
Hello guys, My website is currently holding two different URLs for the same page and I am under the impression such set up is dividing my Page Authority and Link Juice. We currently have the following page with both URLs below: www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/home.aspx
Technical SEO | | JoaoPdaCosta-WBR
www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/ Analysing the page authority and backlinks I identified that we are splitting the amount of backlinks (links from sites, social media and therefore authority). "/home.aspx"
PA: 67
Linking Root Domains: 52
Total Links: 272 "/"
PA: 64
Linking Root Domains: 29
Total Links: 128 I am under the impression that if the URLs were the same we would maximise our backlinks and therefore page authority. My Question: How can I fix this? Should I have a 301 redirect from the page "/" to the "/home.aspx" therefore passing the authority and link juice of “/” directly to “/homes.aspx”? Trying to gather thoughts and ideas on this, suggestions are much appreciated? Thanks!0