Best way to remove low quality paginated search pages
-
I have a website that has around 90k pages indexed, but after doing the math I realized that I only have around 20-30k pages that are actually high quality, the rest are paginated pages from search results within my website. Every time someone searches a term on my site, that term would get its own page, which would include all of the relevant posts that are associated with that search term/tag. My site had around 20k different search terms, all being indexed. I have paused new search terms from being indexed, but what I want to know is if the best route would be to 404 all of the useless paginated pages from the search term pages. And if so, how many should I remove at one time? There must be 40-50k paginated pages and I am curious to know what would be the best bet from an SEO standpoint. All feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
-
According to this article http://www.seroundtable.com/farmer-headers-13111.html
It sounds like I should be 404ing these pages since I never plan to re-writer them and I want them removed from my site and from the index.
According to this article http://www.seroundtable.com/google-robotstxt-advice-12759.html
They believe you shouldn't use robots.txt..
Anyone know the best option in this situation? Should I just 404 a handful of the 40k pagination pages every week/month until they are all 404'd?
-
If this was in wordpress, there are plugins to mass fix this or you can just do it the hard way. I would just opt to remove those from being indexed but follow them. Shouldnt hurt too much and will help in the long run.
-
I agree with Fede, search results pages do not contain any value and search engine might not find it good! The better idea is to block all search result URLs from robots.txt and try to index the real pages that contain value to search engine as well as your end user!
Hope this helps!
-
What I would do, and did for my site, is to noindex (via meta tag) all those search results pages, they actually don't provide any value, you don't want them indexed, those are pages for users searching your site. If a user searches for a term that you have an article/product or whatever, they will find the article/product page more interesting than a search result page, google probably won't even show that in the SERPs...
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
-
Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?
Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard1 -
Client has an inexplicable jump in crawled pages being reported in Google Search Console
Recently a client of mine noticed an inexplicable jump in crawled pages being reported in Google Search Console. We researched the following culprits and found nothing: Rel=canonicals are put in place No SSL/non SSL duplication We used a tool to extrapolate search query page data from Google Search Insights; nothing unusual No dynamic pages being made on the website All necessary landing pages are in the XML sitemap Could this be a glitch in GSC? We are wondering what the heck is going on. 7eaeS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigChad20 -
Dislodged own ranking with poorer quality page?
Hi, So last week we where ranking within the top two pages for google for a results page at something like rank 21 - https://www.whichledlight.com/t/g9-led-bulbs We have been tracking this page and earned a few decent domain authority links here. Today when the new rankings came in it looks like a blog page we wrote a while back has jumped several pages to number 13 in the rankings - ok so not the end of the world BUT our results page seems to have disappeared from the rankings. You can see from the screen shot in the attached link at some point Moz / Google has noted that both the pages are relevent in some capaicty. Has Google decided that because both pages are from the site and both are showing ranking signals for the same traffic that one should go? It also seems weird that this blog one would come from nowhere to rank so highly in the course of a week. Perhaps they have changed their algorithm? This is a bit of a concern for us as it is unclear whats happened - especially after we where so close to getting to page one for a valued search term. SBZRaIq
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup0 -
Low quality links on non www version only?
Spam links showing up on non-www version only. Why is this? And is it still important to remove these links even though the preferred domain is www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LinkRightMedia0 -
Automated Quality Content Acceptable Even Though Looks Similar Across Pages
I have some advanced statistics modules implemented on my website, which is very high level added value for users. However, wording is similar across 1000+ pages, with difference being the statistical findings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Page Ex 1: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu-condos/
Page Ex: 2: http://www.honoluluhi5.com/oahu/honolulu/metro/waikiki-condos/ As you can see same wording is used "Median Sales Price per Year", "$ Volume of Active Listings" etc etc....difference being the findings / results are obviously different. Questions: are search engines smart enough to realize the quality in this or do they see similar wording across 1000+ pages and p-otentially consider the pages low-quality content, because search engines are unable to identify the high level added value and complexity in pulling such quality data? If that may be the case, does that mean I ought to make the pages more "unique" by including a little piece of writing about each page to make them look more unique, even though it is not of value to users?0 -
How do I best deal with pages returning 404 errors as they contain links from other sites?
I have over 750 URL's returning 404 errors. The majority of these pages have back links from sites, however the credibility of these pages from what I can see is somewhat dubious, mainly forums and sites with low DA & PA. It has been suggested placing 301 redirects from these pages, a nice easy solution, however I am concerned that we could do more harm than good to our sites credibility and link building strategy going into 2013. I don't want to redirect these pages if its going to cause a panda/penguin problem. Could I request manual removal or something of this nature? Thoughts appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Best way to SEO crowdsourcing site
What is the best way to SEO a crowdsourcing site? The websites content is entirely propagated by the user
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Remove Landing Pages?
Howdy Guys, I've just been listening to the latest edition of whiteboard Friday regarding the over-optimization penalty. I'm just wondering if we should remove alot of make specifc landing pages... For instance we have a landing pages for our top 20 cars... For instance "bmw keyword" or "audi keyword" What do you guys think? remove them and 301 the pages to the homepage? Thanks, Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0