Getting pages that load dynamically into the SE's
-
SEO'ers,
Am dealing with an issue I cannot figure out the best way to handle. Working on a website that shows the definitions of words which are loaded dynamically from an open source. Source such as: wiktionary.org
When you visit a particular page to see the definition of the word, say; www.example.com/dictionary/example/ the definition is there. However, how can we get all the definition pages to get indexed in search engines? The WordPress sitemap plugin is not picking up these pages to be added automatically - guess because it's dynamic - but when using a sitemap crawler pages are detected.
Can anybody give advice on how to go about getting the 200k+ pages indexed in the SE's? If it helps, here's a reference site that seems to load it's definitions dynamically and has succeeded in getting its pages indexed: http://www.encyclo.nl/begrip/sample
-
I see what you mean there - thanks for sharing your expertise and views on this issue. Much appreciated
-
The only way I'd let those pages be indexed is if they had unique content on them AND/OR provided value in other ways besides just providing the Wiki definition. There are many possibilities for doing this, none of them scalable in an automated fashion, IMHO.
You could take the top 20% of those pages (based on traffic, conversions, revenue...) and really customize them by adding your own definitions and elaborating on the origin of the word, etc... Beyond that you'd probably see a decline in ROI.
-
Everett, yes that's correct. I will go ahead and follow up on what you said. I do still wonder what the best way would be to go about getting it indexed - if I wanted to do that in the future. If you could shed some light on how to go about that, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks so much in advance!
-
It appears that your definitions are coming from wiktionary.org and are therefore duplicate content. If you were providing your own definitions I would say keep the pages indexable, but in this case I would recommend adding a noindex, follow robots meta tag to the html header of those pages.
-
Hi Everett, I've been looking at the index for word definitions and there's so many pages that are very similar to each other. It's worth giving it a shot I think. If you can provide feedback please do. Here's the domain: http://freewordfinder.com. The dictionary is an addition to users who'd like to see what a word means after they've found a word from random letters. You can do a search at the top to see the results, then click through to the definition of the word. Thanks in advance
-
Ron,
We could probably tell you how to get those pages indexed, but then we'd have to tell you how to get them removed from the index when Google sees them all as duplicate content with no added value. My advice is to keep them unindexed, but if you really want them to be indexed tell us the domain and I'll have a look at how it's working and provide some feedback.
-
Hi Keri, did you think that the site might get penalized because it would in essence be duplicate content from another site? Even though the source is linked from the page? Please let me know your thoughts when you can
-
No they currently do not have additional information on them. They are simply better organized on my pages compared to the 3rd party. The unique information is what drives visitors to the site and from those pages it links to the definitions just in case they're interested understanding the meaning of a word. Does that help?
-
Do the individual pages with the definitions have additional information on them, or are they just from a third party, with other parts of the site having the unique information?
-
Hi Keri, thanks for your response. Well, I see what you're saying. The pages that show the definition pulled from the 3rd party are actually supplementary to the solution the site provides (core value). Shouldn't that make a difference?
-
I've got a question back for you that's more of a meta question. Why would the search engines want to index your pages? If all the page is doing is grabbing information from another source, your site isn't offering any additional value to the users, and the search engine algos aren't going to see the point in sending you visitors.
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
-
How should I handle hreflang tags if it's the same language in all targeting countries?
My company is creating an international version of our site at international.example.com. We are located in the US with our main site at www.example.com targeting US & Canada but offering slightly different products elsewhere internationally. Ideally, we would have hreflang tags for different versions in different languages, however, it's going to be an almost duplicate site besides a few different SKUs. All language and content on the site is going to be in English. Again, the only content changing is slightly different SKUs, they are almost identical sites. The subdomain is our only option right now. Should we implement hreflang tags even if both languages are English and only some of the content is different? Or will having just canonicals be fine? How should we handle this? Would it make sense to use hreflang this way and include it on both versions? I believe this would be signaling for US & Canda visitors to visit our main site and all other users go to the international site. Am I thinking this correctly or should we be doing this a different way?
International SEO | | tcope250 -
How to handle rel canonical on secondary TLD's - multi regional sites.
I currently have a .com domain which I am think of duplicating the content on to another tld, CO.UK (and regionalize some aspects like contact numbers etc). From my research, it seems that in gwt you must then indicate which country you wish to target, in the co.uk case the UK. My question is how should I handle rel canonical in the duplicated site. should it rel canonical back to the .com or the co.uk? Any other pointers would also be appreciated. Thx
International SEO | | dmccarthy0 -
Massive jump in pages indexed (and I do mean massive)
Hello mozzers, I have been working in SEO for a number of years but never seen anything like a jump in pages indexed of this proportion (image is from the Index Status report in Google Webmaster Tools: http://i.imgur.com/79mW6Jl.png Has anyone has ever seen anything like this?
International SEO | | Lina-iWeb
Anyone have an idea about what happened? One thing that sprung to mind might be that the same pages are now getting indexed in several more google country sites (e.g. google.ca, google.co.uk, google.es, google.com.mx) but I don't know if the Index Status report in WMT works like that. A few notes to explain the context: It's an eCommerce website with service pages and around 9 different pages listing products. The site is small - only around 100 pages across three languages 1.5 months ago we migrated from three language subdomains to a single sub-domain with language directories. Before and after the migration I used hreflang tags across the board. We saw about 50% uplift in traffic from unbranded organic terms after the migration (although on day one it was more like +300%), especially from more language diversity. I had an issue where the 'sort' links on the product tables were giving rise to thousands of pages of duplicate content, although I had used the URL parameter handling to communicate to Google that these were not significantly different and only to index the representative URL. About 2 weeks ago I blocked them using the robots.txt (Disallow: *?sort). I never felt these were doing us too much harm in reality although many of them are indexed and can be found with a site:xxx.com search. At the same time as adding *?sort to the robots.txt, I made an hreflang sitemap for each language, and linked to them from an index sitemap and added these to WMT. I added some country specific alternate URLs as well as language just to see if I started getting more traffic from those countries (e.g. xxx.com/es/ for Spanish, xxx.com/es/ for Spain, xxx.xom/es/ for Mexico etc). I dodn't seem to get any benefit from this. Webmaster tools profile is for a URL that is the root domain xxx.com. We have a lot of other subdomains, including a blog that is far bigger than our main site. But looking at the Search Queries report, all the pages listed are on the core website so I don't think it is the blog pages etc. I have seen a couple of good days in terms of unbranded organic search referrals - no spike or drop off but a couple of good days in keeping with recent improvements in these kinds of referrals. We have some software mirror sub domains that are duplicated across two website: xxx.mirror.xxx.com and xxx.mirror.xxx.ca. Many of these don't even have sections and Google seemed to be handling the duplication, always preferring to show the .com URL despite no cross-site canonicals in place. Very interesting, I'm sure you will agree! THANKS FOR READING! 79mW6Jl.png0 -
Are my translated pages damaging my ranking?
Hi there, I have a site in English but with duplicates in different languages. The first problem is that these translated versions of my site receive no ranking on google stars (while the english does) - why is this? The second problem is that SEOmoz counts the errors on my site and then duplicates this error count for all the translated versions of my site - meaning I have a huge amount of errors (too many on-page links). Add this to the fact that I use affilite ID´s to track different types of traffic to my site - so all page urls in english and other languages, with an affiliate id on the end of the url, count as an error. This means I have a huge amount of on page errors indicated by SEOmoz, plus no ranking for my translated pages - I think this is really harming my overall ranking and site trust. What are your opinions on this?
International SEO | | sparkit0 -
Should product-pages with different currencies have different URLs?
Here is a question that should be of interest for small online merchants selling internationally in multiple currencies. When, based on geolocation, a product-page is served with different currencies, should a product-page have a different URL for each currency? Thanks.
International SEO | | AdrienOLeary0 -
Analytics Profile for '.co.uk' extension
What's up Mozzers, I am currently doing some work for a local business in the UK and they've asked me to set-up Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools profiles for them. The site is currently accessible at the following domain extension, 'mydomain.com' and 'mydomain.co.uk'. What is the best way to set this up in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools so I get the most accurate measurement of traffic coming to my website?
International SEO | | NiallSmith0 -
Can I point some rel alternate pages to a 404?
Hi everyone, I'm just setting up a series international websites and need to use rel="alternate" to make sure Google indexes the right thing and doesn't hit us with duplicate content. The problem is that rel="alternate" is page specific, and our international websites aren't exact copies of the main UK website. We've taken out the ecommerce module and a few blog categories because they aren't relevant. Can I just blanket implement rel="alternate" and let it sometimes point to a 404 on the alternate websites? Or is Google going to find that a bit weird? Thanks,
International SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
Getting A Sub Domain To Out-Rank The Main Domain
Hi, We have a prospective client who currently have a sub domain setup for each language, they all have the same content as the main domain. The problem is that the main domain is written in English (but not UK English), and they want the UK sub domain to outrank it (it's the other way round at the moment). Effectively, there are duplicate content issues here and as a result it looks like Google have chosen to keep the main domain (as it has more authority) and lower the UK sub results in its rankings. Is there a feature in webmaster tools where you can target subdomains to a location (I know you can do this with a main domain). Additionally, any other tips for the above would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,
International SEO | | jasarrow0