Why use noindex, follow vs rel next/prev
-
Look at what www.shutterstock.com/cat-26p3-Abstract.html
does with their search results page 3 for 'Abstract' - same for page 2-N in the paginated series.
| name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"> |
| |Why is this a better alternative then using the next/prev, per Google's official statement on pagination? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744
Which doesn't even mention this as an option. Any ideas? Does this improve the odds of the first page in the paginated series ranking for the target term? There can't be a 'view all page' because there are simply too many items.
- Jeff
-
Hmmm - good thought. I wonder if Google is giving out deliberately bad advice for dealing with paginated sets, in that they never mention <noindex, follow="">as a viable alternative to next/prev. </noindex,>
If each paginated page is all unique assets (photos), why would it be dupe?
J
-
I don't think they're "gaming" Googlebot - I think they're trying to help the bots properly crawl through the site, index the relevant content, but not create hundreds of thousands of empty pages that will simply dilute their index and lower the overall value of the site in the search engine's eyes - I think they're trying to keep the Panda hungry and not provide it with lots of yummy food for it's low quality content hungry stomach.
This is why they are noindexing the pages - not to game the system, but to actually play by the system's rules.
-
Thanks Mark - if you disable javascript or impersonate Google-bot using a browser extension, then click on one of the main categories on the homepage bottom nav, you arrive here:
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat-5-Education.html
and click next, you get a URL like this: http://www.shutterstock.com/cat-5p2-Education.html
which is noindex,follow
if I arrive at the site without impersonating google-bot:
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat-5-Education.html#page=2
with a canonical back to http://www.shutterstock.com/cat-5-Education.html
So it seems they are trying to literally game Google - is there any evidence this works?
-
It seems like they noindexed that page because it may be part of an antiquated version of the site navigation/structure, or part of the cms and not something they want to promote. Not sure how you got there, but when you get to the primary version of a category, and then click through to the next page, the items shown change via ajax and the URL stays the same, just with a parameter that this is the second set of items being shown.
With the url staying the same, for their primary path of navigation, I don't think rel prev/next would be relevant. And these other pages probably created by the cms but not easily accessible they've noindexed - that's my best guess
-
There's more than one way to skin a cat. So while rel next/prev is an option, you could also dump it all out in one page OR you could also noindex your search page and let your sitemap do the work of notifying Google of your pages. I don't know that it's better (I would guess not but that's just a guess) but you could do it that way and not hurt yourself.
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
-
No Follow & Rel Canon for Product Filters
Our site uses Canonicals to address duplicate content issues with product/facet filtering. example: www.mysite.com/product?color=blue Relcanon= www.mysite.com/product However, our site is also using no follow for all of the "filters" on a page (so all ?color=, etc. links are no follow). What is the benefit of utilizing the no follow on the filters if we have the rel canon in place? Is this an effort to save crawl budget? Are we giving up possible SEO juice by having the no follow and not having the crawler get to the canonical tag and subsequently reference the main page? Is this just something we just forget about? I hope we're not giving up SEO juice by
Technical SEO | | Remke0 -
Using Web Applications for SEO
I am in the sign/banner business, for years I have had a flash based web application that I developed which allows customers to design their own signs/banners online. With the demise of flash i am prompted to begin developing an HTML5 based application to take it's place. Developing this software is a rather expensive endeavor so many local sign shops, which don't sell on the web, don't bother to develop such an application, but what if i gave it to them? I assume a fair amount would find great value in such an application thereby allowing their clients to communicate a design idea without having to drive to the store front. The application would actually run embedded on my site thus earning me a link back to my site. Question is this: Is this a bad idea. If dozens of sign shops are running my application embedded on their sites will the help or hurt me? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RocketBanner0 -
Page Name vs Header
Hi! I was wondering if one of our knowledgeable community members can help me out: I use the drag & drop Intuit Website Builder. For each page, there is a field for the page "Name" and for the "Header". I understand the header is a standard element in a page. What exactly is the page "Name", how is different from the header and can/should I use the same text for both? Your input for a beginner like me is appreciated! I also have another question if you guys will indulge me: Intuit's support is terrible. You cannot get assistance over the phone, only through an annoying "chat" system. Wordpress has been recommended to me by multiple people. Are they really that good? how is their support?
Technical SEO | | Jorge1110 -
'No Follow' and 'Do Follow' links when using WordPress plugins
Hi all I hope someone can help me out with the following question in regards to 'no follow' and 'do follow' links in combination with WordPress plugins. Some plugins that deal with links i.e. link masking or SEO plugins do give you the option to 'not follow' links. Can someone speak from experience that this does actually work?? It's really quite stupid, but only occurred to me that when using the FireFox add on 'NoDoFollow' as well as looking at the SEOmoz link profile of course, 95% of my links are actually marked as FOLLOW, while the opposite should be the case. For example I mark about 90% of outgoing links as no follow within a link masking plugin. Well, why would WordPress plugins give you the option to mark links as no follow in the first place when they do in fact appear as follow for search engines and SEOmoz? Is this a WordPress thing or whatnot? Maybe they are in fact no follow, and the information supplied by SEO tools comes from the basic HTML structure analysis. I don't know... This really got me worried. Hope someone can shed a light. All the best and many thanks for your answers!
Technical SEO | | Hermski0 -
No crawl code for pages of helpful links vs. no follow code on each link?
Our college website has many "owners" who want pages of "helpful links" resulting in a large number of outbound links. If we add code to the pages to prevent them from being crawled, will that be just as effective as making every individual link no follow?
Technical SEO | | LAJN0 -
Best way to create a shareable dynamic infographic - Embed / Iframe / other?
Hi all, After searching around, there doesn't seem to be any clear agreement in the SEO community of the best way to implement a shareable dynamic infographic for other people to put into their site. i.e. That will pass credit for the links to the original site. Consider the following example for the web application that we are putting the finishing touches on: The underlying site has a number of content pages that we want to rank for. We have created a number of infogrpahics showing data overlayed on top of a google map. The data continuously changes and there are javascript files that have to load in order to achieve the interactivity. There is one infographic per page on our site and there is a link at the bottom of the infographic that deep links back to each specific page on our site. What is the ideal way to implement this infographic so that the maximum SEO value is passed back to our site through the links? In our development version we have copied the youtube approach implemented this as an iframe. e.g. <iframe height="360" width="640" src="http://www.tbd.com/embed/golf" frameborder="0"></iframe>. The link at the bottom of that then links to http://www.tbd.com/golf This is the same approach that Youtube uses, however I'm nervous that the value of the link wont pass from the sites that are using the infographic. Should we do this as an embed object instead, or some other method? Thanks in advance for your help. James
Technical SEO | | jtriggs0 -
SEO-MOZ bar question on root vs subdomain / canonicalization issues
When I look at the SEO-MOZ bar for our site and click next to subdomain (# links from #domains) it shows my main incoming links etc. but when I click on root domain ity shows mydomain/default.asp and 4 incoming links as well as a message that says this url redirects to another url. Does this imply canonicalization issues or is there a 301 redirect to my non /default.asp correcting this issue. Thanks kindly, Howard
Technical SEO | | mrkingsley0 -
Rel-canonical tag
Hi, I'm having some confusion with the rel-canonical tag. A few months ago we implemented the rel-canonical tag because we had many errors specifically duplicate page content come upon the SEOmoz web app (mostly because we use tracking code). I had asked what to do about this and was advised by the SEOmoz web app to implement the rel-canonical tag. However, when I'm working on the Keyword Optimizer Tool, it always checks off that I'm using the rel-canonical tag improperly, and then when I go into our sites' CMS for that page and uncheck "Use Canonical URL", the keyword optimizer tool up's my grade for that correction/that I've made an improvement. So my question is if the page I'm working on is the one I want search engines to find, should I not be using the Canonical URL tag? Should the Canonical URL tag only be used on URL's with the tracking code?
Technical SEO | | aircyclemegan0