What this site is doing? Does it look like cloaking to you?
-
Hi here,
I was studying our competitors SEO strategies, and I have noticed that one of our major competitors has setup something pretty weird from a SEO stand point for which I would like to know your thoughts about because I can't find a clear explanation for it.
Here is the deal: the site is musicnotes.com, and their product pages are located inside the /sheetmusic/ directory, so if you want to see all their product pages indexed on Google, you can just type in Google:
site:musicnotes.com inurl:/sheetmusic/
Then you will get about 290,000 indexed pages. No, here is the tricky part: try to click on one of those links, then you will get a 302 redirect to a page that includes a meta "noindex, nofollow" directive.
Isn't that pretty weird? Why would they want to "nonidex, nofollow" a page from a 302 redirect? And how in the heck the redirecting page is still in the index?!! And how Google can allow that?!
All this sounds weird to me and remind me spammy techniques of the 90s called "cloaking"... what do you think?
-
Sure I will! Thanks!
-
If you still need SEO and/or programming advice/work done after the summer let me know
-
Ok, nice to know.. we are always looking for passionate people that can work with us. Thanks!
-
At the moment I am very busy with a couple of projects. In general I do work as a SEO consultant.
Actually i'm a programmer, but down the line I started to fall in love with SEO and started to do that too. -
Yes, I'd like to know that tool.
A question: do you offer SEO consultation?
Thank you again Wesley.
-
Apperently Google keeps the original URL in the index as the source. It some ways it makes sense to do this.
It is still a pretty weird trick and I still don't know a good reason to do this. Would like to know if their are any consequences to this weird 'technique'. -
Thanks Wesley, that makes sense... but what's most weird to me is that Google keeps their pages in the index despite this trick... unless the 302 redirect allows legitimately that (maybe for a limited time)?
-
I don't think the word 'cloaking' is the right word since that is hiding content from users which you do want to present to the search engines. It is pretty weird though. A 302 should be a temporarily redirect and that they want to no-index the link it redirects to could make sense in some way.
If they are planning on changing the website then they could be temporarily redirecting the url's to new ones which they don't want to be indexed. When they have made the necessary changes they will remove the redirect and possibly the no-index pages.
Seems like a weird workaround but i've seen people thinking in weirder ways before.
It's more probably that they suffered from a panda or penguin update and that just like you they thought they could recover with a no-index (and a redirect?).Pretty weird story, curious to see if anyone else has some kind of explanation to why someone would set their site up like this.
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
-
Large Site - Complete Site URL Change and How to Preserver Organic Rankings/Traffic
Hello Community, What is your experience with site redesign when it comes to preserving the traffic? If a large enterprise website has to go through a site-wide enhancement (resulting in change of all URLs and partial content), what do you expect from Organic rankings and traffic? I assume we will experience a period that Google needs to "re-orientate" itself with the new site, if so, do you have similar experience and tips on how to minimize the traffic loss? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b.digi0 -
Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map. Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not. Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
How can i redirect my site to other domain ?
I have been running an eCommerce site since 2008 and have a PR3 with mostly have an authority link from reputed sites, how can I transfer my existing eCommerce site to the new domain so in the new domain i get SEO value from the old domain. Please advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
Hey Mozzers, I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well. My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together? To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other? My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial. A little advice/clarification would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Optimize a Classifieds Site
Hi, I have a classifieds website and would like to optimize it. The issues/questions I have: A Classifieds site has, say, 500 cities. Is it better to create separate subdomains for each city (http://city_name.site.com) or subdirectory (http://site.com/city_name)? Now in each city, there will be say 50 categories. Now these 50 categories are common across all the cities. Hence, the layout and content will be the same with difference of latest ads from each city and name of the city and the urls pointing to each category in the relevant city. The site architecture of a classifieds site is highly prone to have major content which is not really a duplicate content. What is the best way to deal with this situation? I have been hit by Panda in April 2011 with traffic going down 50%. However, the traffic since then has been around same level. How to best handle the duplicate content penalty in case with site like a classifieds site. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ketan90 -
How do you prevent the mobile site becoming a duplicate of the full browser site?
We have a larger site with 100k+ pages, we need to create a mobile site which gets indexed in the mobile engines but I am afraid that google bot will consider these pages duplicates of the normal site pages. I know I can block it on the robots.txt but I still need it to be indexed for mobile search engines and I think google has a mobile crawler as well. Feel free to give me any other tips that I should follow while trying to optimize the mobile version. Any help would be appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pulseseo0 -
Apple like support
Hello, with a support system similar to this one: https://expresslane.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.do would you suggest that express lane be put in a folder rather than a subdomain? EX: sony.com/expresslane/getproductgroulist.do for authority purposes or is there an advantage to have it on a subdomain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | matmox0 -
New sites what is the first things to do?
Hi Guys, If you have a baby of a domain which is only a few months old what should be the priorty for getting establish once all the on site stuff has been done? I know the directories are not as important as they use to be but is there a top list that should be worked through steadly to get the new site setup on? Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ao.com0