Should I block non-informative pages from Google's index?
-
Our site has about 1000 pages indexed, and the vast majority of them are not useful, and/or contain little content. Some of these are:
-Galleries
-Pages of images with no text except for navigation
-Popup windows that contain further information about something but contain no navigation, and sometimes only a couple sentencesMy question is whether or not I should put a noindex in the meta tags.
I think it would be good because the ratio of quality to low quality pages right now is not good at all.
I am apprehensive because if I'm blocking more than half my site from Google, won't Google see that as a suspicious or bad practice?
-
To the spiders, would the content in the lightbox be considered on the page?
-
I would discriminate these pages on the basis of income or search engine traffic rather than use their informativeness.
I have semiinformative pages that pull lots of traffic and make lots of money - and informative pages that make next to nothing.
-
More a technical answer than SEO-specific, but you could place the pop up content in a lightbox similar to your gallery items with a script like http://fancyapps.com/fancybox/, colorbox, etc. These will allow you to lightbox on page content in addition to just photos.
So you could technically have the price table displayed in the page for non-javascript enabled clients, and the lightbox script would show it when clicked, and you wouldn't have to worry about pop-up blockers or having the popup content be a separate page.
-
I know PR shaping is most commonly done with nofollows but the same core principle holds: you don't want the spiders to do something out of fear that you're "diluting" the site's value. Doing it with noindex is just as bad as nofollow, if not worse.
-
When it comes to popups, keep in mind that some users' popup blockers might prevent these from even loading. As is, I don't think it matters much whether you noindex these price list pages or not. You certainly could, as they're not going to appear in any search result, and they're not going to attract links.
I would play with ways to improve the user experience, but putting the large tables on the page probably isn't the way to do that. To me, I think a better option would be (somewhere above the fold) allowing the user to select the type (plain/patched/etc.) quantity, and other variables. They would then get a price quote (as on the bottom of the page), along with a button to continue the checkout process or otherwise continue to the next step. I'd also display the original price per item crossed out, the phrase "bulk discounts" somewhere close, and then the new price per item.
Telling people what they need to do next (it took me a while to find where to buy) and simplifying the pricing at the same time could help a lot. I also noticed that the price quote on the contact page seems to be loading inside the same cramped frame.
-
Hi there,
Sorry I didn't see this when I posted. PR sculpting generally refers to the practice of using internal nofollows - which I'm not a fan of either, not least because it doesn't work. I also agree that pages that users could find useful should generally remain in the index.
-
Thanks for that great information. This is a good example of what I'm taking about:
http://www.stadriemblems.com/scouting/neckerchiefs/index.htm
Under "Plain Neckerchief" click on "view pricelist" or "color chart"
So, you think a better practice would be to just include that pricelist on the same page instead?
-
Hi Marisa,
To determine which pages should be noindexed, first ask yourself first whether a user would want to land on the URL in question. Second, is the URL receiving traffic as an organic landing page right now? Third, does the content serve a purpose to the user? Does it need to exist?
If the answer to all of the above questions is "no," then go ahead and noindex the page. If you answer yes to one of the above, some evaluation is in order. Can you add content, improve the navigation and appearance, or make the page more useful rather than noindexing it?
Generally you can enhance gallery pages for search engines and users by labeling/captioning the images and making sure the alt text is in order. On category pages, add some content, label products, and provide them with a next action.
Do the popups contain useful, non-repeating, or important info? If so, can the content be placed on the page somewhere instead? The only way I would use a popup and noindex it is if the content in the popup is optional and duplicated, such as the often-seen "What's This?" that explains a field or term that is repeated across the site, and each instance makes a new URL.
I've never heard of anyone running into problems with Google for noindexing too much stuff. You're essentially just telling them that the page is not good for users to find. You will, however, tend to improve organic traffic and user experience by making each page useful and adding an appropriate amount of content.
Hope that helps,
Carson
-
I'm not a fan of this (commonly called page rank shaping). First, you're trying to tell Google what to index and what to ignore. Second, how do you know those pages have no value? What if I found an image in your gallery and linked to it off my blog? Now you're missing out on link juice. It might not be viewed as suspicious, but it won't help your site any.
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
-
Google adding main site name to the title tags of pages in the sub folders: How to handle?
Hi community, Ours is a WP hosted website. We have given our site title which reflects across all the website page title suffix. Like "Moz SEO" will be default at the title for pages like "Local SEO - Moz SEO". We have given different page title suffix to our sub-folders' pages like blog and help guides. For blog we have given "Moz blog" as title tag suffix which was working fine. But Google suddenly started showing main website's title as suffix in pages of sub folders. Ex blog: "How to rank better - Moz blog - Moz SEO". Here we can see "Moz SEO" has been added which is not required. How to handle this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Cache
So, when I gain a link I always check to see if the page that is linking is in the Google cache. I've noticed recently that more and more pages are actually not showing up in Google's cache, yet still appear in search results. I did read an article from someone whoo works at Google a few weeks back that there is sometimes an error with the cache and occasionally the cache will not display. This week, my own website isn't showing up in the cache yet I'm still ranking in SERP's. I'm not worried about it, mostly whitehat, but has there been any indication that Google are phasing out the ability to check cache's of websites?
Algorithm Updates | | ThorUK0 -
URL in SERP: Google's stand
Months back, we can notice "keyword" will be bold and highlighted if its in the SERP URL. Now Google no more highlights any URLs even with exact match of keyword we search. Beside UI, Does this mean Google might devalued or reduced the importance of URL as ranking factor? We can see many search results match partially or completely in URL with search keywords.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Bing not indexing pages
We have taken all recommended steps to index our site sitegeek.com pages to Bing Bot but failed to index them. Bing bot crawled more than 5,000 pages every day but strange why pages are not getting index ? if we query site:sitegeek.com in Bing Bing Search Engine shows only 1,200 pages got indexed. but we query site:sitegeek.com in Google Google Search Engine show more 546,000 pages got indexed. For example : https://www.sitegeek.com/000webhost Above page crawled by Google but Bing. Can anyone suggest what we are missing on this page? what need to change to index such pages? Thanks! Rajiv
Algorithm Updates | | gamesecure0 -
Wordpress Canonical Tag Pointing to Same Page
So I noticed on a few of my clients wordpress tags (via moz) that there are canonical tags on URLs, pointing to that same URL. What is the point of that, and is it harming the website? Is this being done automatically via a plugin? Should I remove the canonical tags or leave as is?
Algorithm Updates | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Does this mean my pages are ranking better?
In GWT impressions are down 17%, clicks are up 57%. Is it safe to assume that pages are ranking better for my site? We have earned a couple great links in the past month.. 5lDZEUJ
Algorithm Updates | | Theskimonster0 -
Google is showing crazy results
Google is showing crazy results in these days sometimes my sites are on top of all keywords sometimes far behind in search engine in same day what is going on ????
Algorithm Updates | | GM0070 -
When Google crawls and indexes a new page does it show up immediately in Google search - "site;"?
We made changes to a site, including the addition of a new page and corresponding link/text changes to existing pages. The changes are not yet showing up in the Google index (“site:”/cache), but, approximately 24 hours after making the changes, The SERP's for this site jumped up. We obtained a new back link about a couple of weeks ago, but it is not yet showing up in OSE, Webmaster Tools, or other tools. Just wondering if you think the Google SERP changes run ahead of what they actually show us in site: or cache updates. Has Google made a significant SERP “adjustment” recently? Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | richpalpine0