Should I index my search result pages?
-
I have a job site and I am planning to introduce a search feature.
The question I have is, is it a good idea to index search results even if the query parameters are not there?
Example: A user searches for "marketing jobs in New York that pay more than 50000$". A random page will be generated like example.com/job-result/marketing-jobs-in-new-york-that-pay-more-than-50000/
For any search that gets executed, the same procedure would be followed.
This would result in a large number of search result pages automatically set up for long tail keywords.
Do you think this is a good idea? Or is it a bad idea based on all the recent Google algorithm updates?
-
Closest easy option I could find in my theme settings was to limit the content excerpt word count to 1 word....
-
If you are using Wordpress SEO by yoast plugin, you can do that easily.
-
Do you guys know how to tell wordpress to not allow them to be indexed without messing with robots.txt?
Or is there any easy way?
-
It can be a good way to drive long tail traffic to your site, it can risk a Panda penalty if you generate too many pages. Many sites allow their search pages to be indexed, and it comes down to your domain authority, number of searches being done, amount of unique content you have, and your risk tolerance. A safer approach is to simply log all searches done on your site, then create unique content around the terms that come up often, this can be a good way to identify good keywords to target.
-
Sounds like a recipe for a duplicate content disaster, there would be nothing unique on the pages, just a list of jobs. Do not index those search result pages.
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
-
My client is using a mobile template for their local pages and the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions
So my client has 2000+ different store locations. Each location has the standard desktop location and my client opted for a corresponding mobile template for each location. Now the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions. However this is only because the mobile template and desktop store pages are using the exact same title/meta description tag. Is Google penalizing my client for this? Would it be worth it to update the mobile template title/meta description tags?
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
My sites "pages indexed by Google" have gone up more than qten-fold.
Prior to doing a little work cleaning up broken links and keyword stuffing Google only indexed 23/333 pages. I realize it may not be because of the work but now we have around 300/333. My question is is this a big deal? cheers,
Technical SEO | | Billboard20120 -
Search Term not appearing in On-Page Grader but is in code?
Hi, I have never had this issue in the past, but I am working on a website currently which is - http://hrfoundations.co.uk I didn't develop this website and the pages are in separate folders on the FTP which I have never come across before but hey ho. Anyway I have added the search term (HR Consultancy West Midlands) to the about us page in the h1, title and description however when I run the On-Page Grader it only says that I have entered it within the body which I haven't even done yet. When I view the page source it has defiantly been uploaded and the search terms are there, I have tried checking the spelling incase I spelt it incorrectly and I still can't seem to find the issue. Has anyone else experience this in the past, I'm going to go away now and check the code for any unclosed divs etc to see if that may be causing any issue's. Thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | chrissmithps0 -
Many Pages Being Combined Into One Long Page
Hi All, In talking with my internal developers, UX, and design team there has been a big push to move from a "tabbed" page structure (where as each tab is it's own page) to combining everything into one long page. It looks great from a user experience standpoint, but I'm concerned that we'll decrease in rankings for the tabbed pages that will be going away, even with a 301 in place. I initially recommending#! or pushstate for each "page section" on the long form content. However there are technical limitations with this in our CMS. The next idea I had was to still leave those pages out there and to link to them in the source code, but this approach may get shot down as well. Has anyone else had to solve for this issue? If so, how did you do it?
Technical SEO | | AllyBank1 -
Search results indexed
Hi there, is is bad practice in seo to have search results for products indexed? For example a search result of holidays to Ibiza, with lots of deals coming up? its a search query url that would be indexed, with just an image and price per product on the page, with about 10 per page? Any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Google place listings and search results- quick question.
Has anybody else noticed that they are ranking better on 'places' yet they have dropped off in the actual search results? We've had no message through webmaster tools. The same seems to have happened to our competitors.
Technical SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Getting more pages indexed by yahoo and bing
Anyone has a reliable way to get more pages indexed in yahoo and bing. Please dont say to get more inner page quality links.
Technical SEO | | mickey110 -
Different pages first results on same keyword search
Hi, Sometimes Google does not show the page you intended for a certain keyword. Logically you would say that the intended page is not relevant/strong enough. But in my case several pages ranked fine for a long period of time and all of a sudden another less important page gets the highest result on a keyword search. (We are in the camping business) For instance: One of our campsites called Tenuta primero used to rank position 9 in google with page below for a long time (search: 'camping tenuta primero') This was the page we intended to rank with. http://www.suncamp.nl/nl/nl/campings/italie/friuli-venezia-giulia/camping-tenuta-primero/uc19-l1-n797-c13-r115-cp104959/ Now all of a sudden the position for search 'camping tenuta primero' is position 33 with review page below. http://www.suncamp.nl/nl/nl/campings/italie/friuli-venezia-giulia/camping-tenuta-primero/beoordelingen/uc19-l1-n797-c13-r115-cp104959-t22598/ What could have caused this? Pages are in Dutch but main keywords are camping are tenuta primero. Thank you very much in advance! Kind regards, Dennis Overbeek Dennis@acsi.eu | www.suncamp.nl |
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI0