To index search results or to not index search results?
-
What are your feelings about indexing search results? I know big brands can get away with it (yelp, ebay, etc). Apart from UGC, it seems like one of the best ways to capture long tail traffic at scale.
If the search results offer valuable / engaging content, would you give it a go?
-
No
see:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/site-search-dynamic-content-and-seo/01032013/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-results-in-search-results/
My feeling is that if that site search info captures long-tail traffi,c why not find a way to make an indexable page targeting the words that have received traffic to that search page. Cutts writes in the post I linked to: "Google does reserve the right to take action to reduce search results (and proxied copies of websites) in our own search results"
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
-
Why is wrong domain being indexed?
We have 2 domains: revolve.com and fwrd.com (unrelated to each other, but hosted on the same server). If you do a site search for revolve.com but enter a designer brand that is only carried on FWRD (not on Revolve), the domain "revolve.com" pops up in the SERP, which is redirected to FWRD.com. Ex. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Awww.revolve.com isabel marant Why is Google indexing the revolve.com pages, which don't actually exist? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Fix Google Index error
I changed my blog URL structure Can Someone please let me how to solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
HTTP Pages Indexed as HTTPS
My site used to be entirely HTTPS. I switched months ago so that all links in the pages that the public has access to are now http only. But I see now that when I do a site:www.qjamba.com, the results include many pages with https in the beginning (including the home page!), which is not what I want. I can redirect to http but that doesn't remove https from the indexing, right? How do I solve this problem? sample of results: Qjamba: Free Local and Online Coupons, coupon codes ... **<cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/</cite>**One and Done savings. Printable coupons and coupon codes for thousands of local and online merchants. No signups, just click and save. Chicnova online coupons and shopping - Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Chicnova</cite>**Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Chicnova. Coupon codes for online discounts on Apparel & Accessories products. Singlehop online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/singlehop</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Singlehop. Coupon codes for online discounts on Business & Industrial, Service products. Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. Online Hockey Savings: Free Local Fast | Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/online-shopping/hockey</cite>**Find big online savings at popular and specialty stores on Hockey, and more. Hitcase online coupons and shopping - Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/online-savings/hitcase</cite>**Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Hitcase. Coupon codes for online discounts on Electronics, Cameras & Optics products. Avanquest online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/avanquest</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Avanquest. Coupon codes for online discounts on Software products.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Why is page still indexing?
Hi all, I have a few pages that - despite having a robots meta tag and no follow, no index, they are showing up in Google SERPs. In troubleshooting this with my team, it was brought up that another page could be linking to these pages and causing this. Is that plausible? How could I confirm that? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SSFCU
Sarah0 -
Why does the site I am working on have so few visits from organic search results?
Hello! I am not very experienced with SEO, but I am trying to help out on a site that has been around since 2010 and has well over a thousand pages of high-quality, original content, with more being added all the time. Only around 65 of the site's daily visits come from organic search results; this seems very low. There has already been significant SEO work done on the site. Is there something about the site that strikes anyone as obviously getting in the way of organic traffic? The URL is ellenjovin.com. I would appreciate any thoughts you may have. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
New Web Page Not Indexed
Quick question with probably a straightforward answer... We created a new page on our site 4 days ago, it was in fact a mini-site page though I don't think that makes a difference... To date, the page is not indexed and when I use 'Fetch as Google' in WT I get a 'Not Found' fetch status... I have also used the'Submit URL' in WT which seemed to work ok... We have even resorted to 'pinging' using Pinglar and Ping-O-Matic though we have done this cautiously! I know social media is probably the answer but we have been trying to hold back on that tactic as the page relates to a product that hasn't quite launched yet and we do not want to cause any issues with the vendor! That said, I think we might have to look at sharing the page socially unless anyone has any other ideas? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Does anyone have a clue about my search problem?
After three years of destruction, my site still has a problem - or maybe more than one. OK, I understand I had - and probably still have - a Panda problem. The question is - does anyone know how to fix it, without destroying eveything? If I had money, I'd gladly give it up to fix this, but all I have is me, a small dedicated promotions team, 120,000+ visitors per month and the ability to write, edit and proofread. This is not an easy problem to fix. After completing more than 100 projects, I still haven't got it right, in fact, what I've done over the past 2 months has only made things worse - and I never thought I could do that. Everything has been measured, so as not to destroy our remaining ability to generate income, because without that, its the end of the line. If you can help me fix this, I will do anything for you in return - as long as it is legal, ethical and won't destroy my reputation or hurt others. Unless you are a master jedi guru, and I hope you are, this will NOT be easy, but it will prove that you really are a master, jedi, guru and time lord, and I will tell the world and generate leads for you. I've been doing website and SEO stuff since 1996 and I've always been able to solve problems and fix anything I needed to work on. This has me beaten. So my question is: is there anyone here willing to take a shot at helping me fix this, without the usual response of "change domains" "Delete everything and start over" or "you're screwed" Of course, it is possible that there is a different problem, nothing to do with algorithms, a hard-coded bias or some penalizing setting, that I don't know about, a single needle in a haystack. This problem results in a few visible things. 1. Some pages are buried in supplemental results 2. Search bots pick up new stories within minutes, but they show up in search results many hours later Here is the site: http://shar.es/EGaAC On request, I can provide a list of all the things we've done or tried. (actually I have to finish writing it) Some Notes: There is no manual spam penalty. All outgoing links are nofollow, and have been for 2 years. We never paid for incoming links. We did sell text advertising links 3-4 years ago, using text-link-ads.com, but removed them all 2 1/2 years ago. We did receive payment for some stories, 3-4 years ago, but all have been removed. One more thing. I don't write much - I'm a better editor than a writer, but I wrote a story that had 1 million readers. the massive percentage of 0.0016% came from you-know-who. Yes, 16 visitors. And this was an exclusive, unique story. And there was a similar story, with half a million readers. same result. Seems like there might be a problem!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | loopyal0 -
How important is the number of indexed pages?
I'm considering making a change to using AJAX filtered navigation on my e-commerce site. If I do this, the user experience will be significantly improved but the number of pages that Google finds on my site will go down significantly (in the 10,000's). It feels to me like our filtered navigation has grown out of control and we spend too much time worrying about the url structure of it - in some ways it's paralyzing us. I'd like to be able to focus on pages that matter (explicit Category and Sub-Category) pages and then just let ajax take care of filtering products below these levels. For customer usability this is smart. From the perspective of manageable code and long term design this also seems very smart -we can't continue to worry so much about filtered navigation. My concern is that losing so many indexed pages will have a large negative effect (however, we will reduce duplicate content and be able provide much better category and sub-category pages). We probably should have thought about this a year ago before Google indexed everything :-). Does anybody have any experience with this or insight on what to do? Thanks, -Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cre80