Similar pages: noindex or rel:canonical or disregard parameters?!
-
Hey all!
We have a hotel booking website that has search results pages per destinations (e.g. hotels in NYC is dayguest.com/nyc). Pages are also generated for destinations depending on various parameters, that can be star rating, amenities, style of the properties, etc. (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc/4stars, dayguest.com/nyc/luggagestorage, dayguest.com/nyc/luxury, etc.).
In general, all of these pages are very similar, as for example, there might be 10 hotels in NYC and all of them will offer luggage storage. Pages can be nearly identical. Come the problems of duplicate content and loss of juice by dilution.
I was wondering what was the best practice in such a situation: should I just put all pages except the most important ones (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc) as noindex? Or set it as canonical page for all variations? Or in google webmaster tool ask google to disregard the URLs for various parameters? Or do something else altogether?!
Thanks for the help!
-
Sorry, I don't think I explained (1) very well. What I mean is that you may want to gradually change the site architecture so that not all of the search options are crawlable pages. This could mean putting some filters in form variables, for example (instead of links). It could also mean making sure that certain paths always converge. There's no easy solution. This is a problem all big sites face, and it's very dependent on the platform/CMS.
With (2), a "level" could be anything. Maybe there are major cities you need to cover but everything else could stay out of the index. This really depends on your information architecture, but there's always something that's high priority and something that's low priority. If you can focus Google on the high-priority pages, it can definitely work in your favor. The trick is figuring out how to build the logic such that you can code that dynamically. I've found there's almost always an answer, but it can take some creative thinking. I definitely don't encourage doing it manually.
If the results are easy to group by city and you can code that logic, the canonical may be fine. Since the search results could be different in some cases, canonical isn't technically the best choice, but it does often work. It really depends on how different they can be, so it's a bit tricky.
-
Honestly, option 1 would be a nightmare. Imagine that we add one property in a city not covered. There are about 50 amenities, and most hotels feature most, so as much new pages generated. That would become quickly unmanageable, to handle manually.
Not sure I understand your second option. There are not several "level", only one under the "city" in which the property is. But mutliplied by several cities, they quickly become hundreds, if not thousands.
Why would it not be possible/desirable to code all such pages as canonical pages of each city?
-
Ugh - that's what I was afraid you'd say. Unfortunately, the coincidental problem can't really be easily solved with code, which makes it hard to use canonical tags. There's no good way to tell the site when to use them.
So, a couple of options:
(1) Try to gradually rework the structure so that there are less of these paths.
(2) Consider using META NOINDEX on some lower-value paths. Internal search results don't have great value for Google, so you could let the major categories/options be indexed, but the cut off a certain level (index nothing "below" it). That may be more feasible from a code standpoint.
(3) Use rel=prev/next, use unique TITLEs if possible (based on the query) and just clean things up the best you can, but leave everything indexed.
It depends a lot on your scope, structure, and your future plans. I'm not sure there's one "right" answer.
-
Ugh - that's what I was afraid you'd say. Unfortunately, the coincidental problem can't really be easily solved with code, which makes it hard to use canonical tags. There's no good way to tell the site when to use them.
So, a couple of options:
(1) Try to gradually rework the structure so that there are less of these paths.
(2) Consider using META NOINDEX on some lower-value paths. Internal search results don't have great value for Google, so you could let the major categories/options be indexed, but the cut off a certain level (index nothing "below" it). That may be more feasible from a code standpoint.
(3) Use rel=prev/next, use unique TITLEs if possible (based on the query) and just clean things up the best you can, but leave everything indexed.
It depends a lot on your scope, structure, and your future plans. I'm not sure there's one "right" answer.
-
These pages return the same results coincidentally, that's the issue... The more properties we get on board, the less likely it is that these pages will be similar. But it might take a long time to build that up, and we may never achieve it.
-
Ah, got it - yeah, I think rel=canonical would be fine there, but I'd want to understand your architecture better. Are these pages returning the same results coincidentally, or are these two URLs that basically land on the same combination of search options/filters. If it's the former, it's a lot tougher, because that's just a coincidence happening at large scale. If it's the latter, a solid canonical scheme could help a lot, but I'd also explore whether these paths are useful (or should be indexed at all). In other words, in the long term, it might be better to use one URL consistently, even if people navigate by different paths to reach it.
-
That's odd, they were supposed to be the same. And yeah, results come and go as properties are added/removed from our inventory.
The following is what I wanted to highlight:
http://www.dayguest.com/rome-dayuse/concierge
http://www.dayguest.com/rome-dayuse/air-conditioning
As you can see, the pages are identical, except that one has 5 properties and the other one has 6. Most overlap. There are so manies property "features" or "category", that some list have exactly the same list. Actually, SEOMOZ find that I have over 1700 pages with duplicate content, most being search results page with closely similar contents such as these.
Hence my issue...
-
Are they duplicates in the sense that there are currently no results? I wouldn't generally use rel=canonical on these, because the search results should (theoretically) be different. These are distinct regions and, I assume, have unique properties.
If they're just returning no results, I'd actually consider a META NOINDEX until there are results available. Otherwise, this is likely to be treated as a soft 404 by Google (not a disaster, honestly). It depends on whether results come and go or if you're just building out the site and there will be data later. If the data isn't ready, I think META NOINDEX is a good way to go. Until results are available, these pages have no search value.
-
Well, let me give you an example, look at this page: http://www.dayguest.com/milan-city-centre-dayuse?amenities=10
And this page: http://www.dayguest.com/milan-central-station-dayuse?amenities=10
Do you see what I'm talking about? The pages are identical but for the page title/description & a few words on the page.
So, you'd go for canonical?
-
The relation is more hierarchal then next/previous. Judging from the post you mentioned, canonical would be more appropriate...
-
Sorry, I'm not clear on whether these are paginated search results or actual property pages that vary only by a small amount. As @SEO5 said, if these are paginated search results, you could use rel=prev/next. It's a bit tricky to set up with search filters (you need rel=prev/next + rel=canonical).
If these are nearly identical property pages, then it depends on how they differ. If they only differ by one attribute, I'd probably lean toward the canonical tag.
-
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
-
Link rel="prev" AND canonical
Hi guys, When you have several tabs on your website with products, you can most likely navigate to page 2, 3, 4 etc...
Technical SEO | | AdenaSEO
You can add the link rel="prev" and link rel="next" tags to make sure that 1 page get's indexed / ranked by Google. am I correct? However this still means that all the pages can get indexed, right? For example a webshop makes use of the link rel="prev" and ="next" tags. In the Google results page though, all the seperate tabs pages are still visible/indexed..
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=1
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=24
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=19
etc..... Can we prevent this, and make sure only the main page get's indexed and ranked, by adding a canonical link on every 'tab page' to the main page --> www.domain.nl/watches/ I hope I explained it well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Regards, Tom1 -
Is it easier to rank high with a front page than a landing page?
My product is laptop and of cause, I like to rank high for the keyword "laptop". Do any of you know if the search engines tends to rank a front page higher than a landing page? Eg. www.brand.com vs. www.brand.com/laptop
Technical SEO | | Debitoor0 -
Why is the Page Authority of my product pages so low?
My domain authority is 35 (homepage Page Authority = 45) and my website has been up for years: www.rainchainsdirect.com Most random pages on my site (like this one) have a Page Authority of around 20. However, as a whole, the individual pages of my products rank exceptionally low. Like these: http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/products/copper-channel-link-rain-chain (Page Authority = 1) http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/collections/todays-deals/products/contempo-chain (Page Authority = 1) I was thinking that for whatever reason they have such low authority, that it may explain why these pages rank lower in google for specific searches using my exact product name (in other words, other sites that are piggybacking of my unique products are ranking higher for my product in a specific name search than the original product itself on my site) In any event, I'm trying to get some perspective on why these pages remain with the same non-existent Page Authority. Can anyone help to shed some light on why and what can be done about it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | csblev0 -
Translating Page Titles & Page Descriptions
I am working on a site that will be published in the original English, with localized versions in French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. All the versions will use the English information architecture. As part of the process, we will be translating the page the titles and page descriptions. Translation quality will be outstanding. The client is a translation company. Each version will get at least four pairs of eyes including expert translators, editors, QA experts and proofreaders. My question is what special SEO instructions should be issued to translators re: the page titles and page descriptions. (We have to presume the translators know nothing about SEO.) I was thinking of: stick to the character counts for titles and descriptions make sure the title and description work together avoid over repetition of keywords page titles (over-optimization peril) think of the descriptions as marketing copy try to repeat some title phrases in the description (to get the bolding and promote click though) That's the micro stuff. The macro stuff: We haven't done extensive keyword research for the other languages. Most of the clients are in the US. The other language versions are more a demo of translation ability than looking for clients elsewhere. Are we missing something big here?
Technical SEO | | DanielFreedman0 -
Hotel affiliate website - noindex pages with little unique content?
We are well into development of a hotel affiliate website (using Expedia Affiliate Network), and I know there are many challenges to SEO when using an affiliate system - one of the biggest being how to handle duplicate content. Outside of blog posts and static marketing pages, the majority of the textual content is contained in hotel descriptions. We will be creating unique descriptions over time, but we are a small team and this will be a lengthy process. My question for you mozzers, is whether or not it's advisable for ranking purposes to noindex any page with mostly 'stock' content, and only allow Google to index hotel pages with unique descriptions? Thanks for any input!
Technical SEO | | CassisGroup0 -
Multiple pages - Similar keywords
I'm working on a site with a parent page and two minor pages all dealing with the primary/root keyword "log siding" - How do I optimize all three pages without bastardization of the primary keyword? Parent page - keyword: half-log-siding and log-siding Child Pages (linking from the parent) cedar-log-siding and Pine-log-siding. They all feature "log-siding" and grade well for that keyword (as well as their own long-tail keywords), yet I think based on my rank tracking that Google is unhappy with the multiple pages all (seemingly focused) on log-siding. Any ideas how I can effectively target all the long-tail keywords within their respective landing pages and not draw a penalty from Google towards my parent page and the root keyword? Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | Marvo0 -
Page MozRank and MozTrust 0 for Home Page, Makes No Sense?
Hey Mozzers! I'm a bit confused by a site that is showing a 0 for home page MozRank and MozTrust, while its subdomain and root domain metrics look decent (relatively). I am posting images of the page metrics and subdomain metrics to show the disparity: http://i.imgur.com/3i0jq.png http://i.imgur.com/ydfme.png Is it normal to see this type of disparity? The home page has very little inbound links, but the big goose egg has me wondering if there is something else going on. Has anyone else experienced this? Or, does anyone have speculation as to why a home page would have a 0 MozRank while the subdomain metrics look much better? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ClarityVentures0 -
How similar do pages need to be in order to utilize the canonical tag
Here is my specific situation. My company released new versions of a few documents in the fall. I was hoping that over time the old version would decline and the new version would rise but after 6 months the old version continues to rank #1 and the new version #3. The old version needs to stay on our site but users should really be getting to the most recent version. I think utilizing the canonical tag would solve the issue but i am concerned because the content on the actual pages is not duplicate but it is updated. Below are the two URLs to see the differences in the content. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/06tr008.cfm http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm Is this an appropriate situation to use the canonical tag? If not, is there a better solution.
Technical SEO | | SEI0