Should product searches (on site searches) be noindex?
-
We have a large new site that is suffering from a sitewide panda like penalty. The site has 200k pages indexed by Google. Lots of category and sub category page content and about 25% of the product pages have unique content hand written (vs the other pages using copied content).
So it seems our site is labeled as thin. I'm wondering about using noindex paramaters for the internal site search. We have a canonical tag on search results pointing to domain.com/search/ (client thought that would help) but I'm wondering if we need to just no index all the product search results.
Thoughts?
-
To me it sounds more like domain authority issue, lack of deep links, aged deep links. Gain them as natural as possible, over a period of time. Diversify your link profile. Your competition, those are on page 1, 2, are those in the 400 total root domains range. Again, just the root domains is not the criteria, as the age of the pages, deep links, anchor text, diversity of the links, age of those links all contribute.
You can test, but I am guessing blocking the search result URLs might not do enough. But this would be an interesting test. I would be curious to know what happens. Again, there might be algorithm updates that happen concurrently that could impact the actual test, but you could get a relative idea based on the dates when you block those pages both via a noindex and a disallow.
Let me know. Feel free to touch base via the QA or via email about this.
-
The site is 9 months old, since we purchased it anyways. Someone else had a one page site on it before we bought it for several years.
However, I'm looking to do this because our rankings are pretty poor. In fact, almost every keyword is stuck on page 3 or higher even with Pagerank or 5 and 400+ root domains. I'm afraid the previous SEO company may have got the site in trouble with too much low quality links.
It's either that or the site looks to thin and is not getting past Panda, it has 200k pages in the index of which maybe 2000 have any real solid and original content.
-
I know you said "new". But how new is it ? Are you also constantly working on your Link Profile ? I have seen "Monster" Authority sites within thousand's of those search pages ranking with no issues. So yes, as Tyler said, it might make sense to do a disallow via robots.txt as well as a noindex tag. Are you getting decent enough rankings on your category pages ? Again, it all boils down to the authority of the site/domain.
-
Yes I disallow all internal site searches. This robots.txt breakdown for my ecom platform magento, disallows them, but allows indexation: http://www.e-commercewebdesign.co.uk/blog/magento-seo/magento-robots-txt-seo.php
Tyler
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 way to go about merging 2 sites with significant search volume?
Hi everyone! A client of ours ('Company A') recently acquired another company ('Company B') - both brands carry weight within their industry. Company A's brand name currently registers over 6,500 searches per month, while Company B's brand name draws about 2,500 searches per month. While Company B is smaller, their search volume isn't insignificant. The powers that be plan to discontinue Company B's site at an unspecified date in the future, but it's on the backburner. We'd obviously like to transfer as much of their current ranking as possible, but we also don't want to confuse users. There's additional search volume for term variations such as 'Company B jobs' & 'Company B locations' that we'd like to capture for as long as there's still volume there. Would a microsite with Company B's look & feel (to make it easier to house pages built to capture careers/locations searches) justify its inherent cost, or would it be just as valuable to build a series of landing pages on Company A's site? (Obviously assuming that valid redirects would be in place once Company B's site is taken down.) Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wilcoxcm0 -
Is it posible to improve site rankings working only with an other site?
Hi everyone, i´ll try to explain a situation is happening to me, i´m goint to try to explain the case (im writing the sites without links for explication purposes. Site 1: Adventurerooms Site 2: Adventureroomsmallorca Site 3: Adventureroomsmadrid (the new site) What happen is that at first there was only Adventurerooms and Adventureroomsmallorca, Adventurerooms was for Madrid and linked to the one in Mallorca too, was kind of giving the information for Madrid but in first page split with a link to Mallorca. In a new strategy we create Adventureroomsmadrid for Madrid, and leave Adventurerooms for Spain (with links to Adventureroomsmadrid and Adventureroomsmallorca. We redirect the info for Madrid in Adventurerooms to Adventureroomsmadrid with 301 redirections. We work during this 3 months in Adventureroomsmadrid making content in the blog, and improving (now Adventureroomsmadrid is Moz 15 (perhaps even more), and Adventurerooms is Moz 10. Surprising Adventurerooms is getting better in its search rankings, even when we took away content from it and even without working well. Adventureroomsmadrid is also improving but not as much as Adventurerooms (i know that is a new site, only 3 months), but Adventurerooms gets better results with no content and only DA of 10. I hope i´ve explain the case with my english so the question is: "Is it posible to improve site rankings working only with an other site?" Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webtematica0 -
Unlimited Product Pages
While browsing through my Moz campaign, I noticed that my site is pulling up unlimited numbers of product pages even though no products appear on them. i.e. http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia?page=16 http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia?page=100 http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia?page=200 I have no ideal how to resolve this issue. I can't possible 301 an unlimited number of pages, and I can see this being a big SEO problem. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Ranking on google search
Hello Mozzers Moz On page grader shows A grade for the particular URL,but my page was not ranking on top 100 Google search. Any help is appreciated ,Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sobanadevi0 -
How Google organic search results differ in Local Searches?
We all know Google displays nearby results by locating our ip address. My question is how does these results differ? For eg 1. If someone from Newyork search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" 2. Someone from California search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" 3. Someone from California changes his location to Newyork and search for "chinese Restaurant in Newyork" What are the factors the Google SERP looks into to display the result in local terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rajeevEDU0 -
Product discontinued
Hi there, We have ranking top 3 for a competitive keyword, however the product linked to that keyword has just been discontinued, normally if we have alternatives to this product I would keep this page live and direct users to those alternatives products. What is best practice here? keeping the page live and telling users that this product has been discontinued and offering a helpline number? or just removing the page all together? (404) Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Building a mobile site.
We are building a mobile site that will be launching in another month. I’m concerned that the mobile site will start catabolizing our traditional rankings. Is there a way to keep this from happening? Should we utilize the cross domain canonical tag and point back to the traditional site URLs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO-Team0