Are a lot auf tag-sites in the index a bad signal for low quality? (Panda Update)

[channelplus]

Hello everybody,

first of all please excuse my bad english. I'm from Germany - I try my best.

The case:

I have a Wordpress SEO project which rankings very well. A this moment I have all "archive sites" like "archive", "category" und "tags" indexed. I use the more-Tag for every archive/category/tag site -  so duplicate content ist not really a problem, but in view of the Panda Update, which surely arrives in Germany soon, I wonder if all this Tag/Archive/Category Sites in the index maybe seen as low quality und can hurt the ranking of my whole site. Low quality because: With using the more-tag the site are just a list of internal links with content snippets.

I have 500 articles und 700 Tag Site (all in the index). So my fear is when google (with Panda Update) looks at my site und sees all this (maybe) low quality tag-sites in the index I get penalised because there is not a good proportion between my normal (good quality) Articles und the archive/tag sites. I hope you guys can understand my thoughts.

Do I have a legitimate fear that the mass of tag-site in the index could be problem? Are there any data from the USA, how blogs mit Tag-Site in the Index rank after the Panda Update or if sites which contains of internal Links mit content snippets - like these tag site - are low quality in Google eyes?

Or I'm worring to much?

Thank you very much!

• Oliver

[channelplus]

Hi,

your are right Google rolled out the Pande Update worldwide, but only in english speaking countries. So here in germany there is not Panda, yet. But it will rolled out soon, for sure.

If someone reads this and has actually experience with blogs and indexed Tag-Site before and after the Panda Update, it would be great if you would share the information with me.

At this moment I'm thinking about setting all tag-sites to "noindex, follow". That could be a solution / prevention. As far as I understand the "noindex, follow" the internal link-structure shouldn't be hurt because Google follows all links as usual. Is that right?

Are there any experience on switching from indexed tags to "noindexed, follow" tag? Did that affects the Ranking in a negativ way?

Thank you very much, guys!

• Oliver

[AlanBleiweiss]

This is a question a lot of people have.  First, let me say that Google announced that they rolled out Panda/farmer on a global scale at the beginning of last week.  So if all this content was already in the index for an extended period of time and you did not see a significant drop this past week, it shouldn't be a concern in that regard.

What should be more of a concern is that many of those pages may be competing with individual articles on the site.  It's not necessarily a problem, but could be.  If you're happy with the rankings and the click-through rate to your site from organic rankings, I'd say don't mess with it.  Just my take on things.

[channelplus]

Hello Tompt,

thank for your answer.

No, duplicate content is not what I mean.

It's the point that these tag oder archive pages, which only contains of list of internal links and content snippels (like: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/popular/past-30-days) could be seen as low quality content, because its in fact just a mix of differant post snippets und linking titles and not a real article or one-piece of content.

1. Question: Do you think oder have data, if tag/archives sites like this (just internal links with little content snippets) are "low quality" in googles eyes, especialy after the Panda Update?

2. Question: If so, would it be a problem to have a great number of these pages in the index (700)? Especialy in view of the Panda Update? Because in fact I have more tag/archive pages than realy article pages (500) in the index.

If it is not a problem, it could stay as it is. If it could become a problem, when Panda rolls out in Germany - I may should change something or get these pages out of the index.

I realy hope, you understand what I mean.

Thank you.

[Tompt]

Okay let me explain what I think you mean. You have lots of wordpress pages that essential display your posts in different ways, so categories, tags, archive etc, and you're concerned that they may be penalised for the duplicate content?

With a wordpress site it's fairly common to use the robots.txt to block crawler access to the archive, tags and category pages, which stops the problem completely, but does reduce the ways in which your pages can be accessed.

Does that sound about right?