Can Google Crawl This Page?
-
I'm going to have to post the page in question which i'd rather not do but I have permission from the client to do so.
Question: A recruitment client of mine had their website build on a proprietary platform by a so-called recruitment specialist agency. Unfortunately the site is not performing well in the organic listings.
I believe the culprit is this page and others like it: http://www.prospect-health.com/Jobs/?st=0&o3=973&s=1&o4=1215&sortdir=desc&displayinstance=Advanced Search_Site1&pagesize=50000&page=1&o1=255&sortby=CreationDate&o2=260&ij=0
Basically as soon as you deviate from the top level pages you land on pages that have database-query URLs like this one. My take on it is that Google cannot crawl these pages and is therefore having trouble picking up all of the job listings. I have taken some measures to combat this and obviously we have an xml sitemap in place but it seems the pages that Google finds via the XML feed are not performing because there is no obvious flow of 'link juice' to them.
There are a number of latest jobs listed on top level pages like this one: http://www.prospect-health.com/optometry-jobs and when they are picked up they perform Ok in the SERPs, which is the biggest clue to the problem outlined above.
The agency in question have an SEO department who dispute the problem and their proposed solution is to create more content and build more links (genius!).
Just looking for some clarification from you guys if you don't mind?
-
Hi shr109,
I've sent an email over so you have my address. Please let me know if it doesnt come through, we're recovering from a couple of email issues this end (infected web server in the same IP Subnet as our email server got us blacklisted), it might have ended up in spam!
Thanks,
-
Thanks Toby, good to get a second opinion on these things and some clarification.
The platform is the agency's own proprietary one but i don't know if it's based on an existing framework or completely bespoke. Having looked at some of the other sites they have build though, it seems other clients are experiencing similar indexing problems as they have all utilised a workaround of some sort.
I'll share the name of the agency with you by email if you want to do some digging but I don't think it's fair to name and shame them on here - shr109@hotmail.com
-
I think your pretty much spot on. Google -can- crawl queries but they wont rank very well at all.
Your best bet will be to change: (just reading into this that looks like a 'get all jobs' query)
to just
http://www.prospect-health.com/Jobs
There are loads of ways to remove the query string and keep the functionality, depending on the software powering the site, personally i'd fix up the search to POST data so that it keeps the url clean and add in the appropriate routes to create the path.
I have some experience of job search sites (having worked on a couple of the largest in the UK) and breaking URLS down something like this seems to work best. (depending on the data you have obviously)
<domain>/jobs/<location>/</location></domain>
You could also take a look at how other job sites structure their URLS, (monster.co.uk, targetjobs.co.uk, jobsite.co.uk etc)
Let me know if you need a hand and i'll see if i can be more specific. (you'll have to tell me what its running on though)
EDIT:: You should force lower-case on urls as well. Caps wont effect google but they arn't user friendly (miss types etc)
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
-
Very wierd pages. 2900 403 errors in page crawl for a site that only has 140 pages.
Hi there, I just made a crawl of the website of one of my clients with the crawl tool from moz. I have 2900 403 errors and there is only 140 pages on the website. I will give an exemple of what the crawl error gives me. | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | | | | | | | | | | There are 2900 pages like this. I have tried visiting the pages and they work, but they are only html pages without CSS. Can you guys help me to see what the problems is. We have experienced huge drops in traffic since Septembre.
Technical SEO | | H.M.N.0 -
Google Seeing Way More Pages Than My Site Actually Has
For one of my sites, A-1 Scuba Diving And Snorkeling Adventures, Google is seeing way more pages than I actually have. It sees almost 550 pages but I only have about 50 pages in my XML. I am sure this is an error on my part. Here is the search results that show all my pages. Can anyone give me some guidance on what I did wrong. Is it a canonical url problem, a redirect problem or something else. Built on Wordpress. Thanks in advance for any help you can give. I just want to make sure I am delivering everything I can for the client.
Technical SEO | | InfinityTechnologySolutions0 -
Is There Google 6th page penalty?
My site have keyword domain but my page doesnt up or down at 6th page on search results. And my main page doesnt show 6th page too my alt pages. So what can i do for this penaly? Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | iddaasonuclari0 -
Empty Google cached pages.
My little startup Voyage has a tough relationship with Google. I have been reading SEOMOZ/MOZ for years. I am no pro but I understand the basics pretty well. I would like to know why all pages on my main domain look empty in google cache. Here is one example. Other advice is welcome too. I know a lot of my metas and my markup is bad but I am working on it!
Technical SEO | | vincentgagne0 -
Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page. I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already: a.) in the site's navigation b.) in the sidebar More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article? I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed. Just so I understand this... a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed? b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled? Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | Spencer_LuminInteractive0 -
What is the largest page size a searchbot will crawl?
When setting up pagination, what should we limit the page size to? When will a searchbot stop crawling a particular page?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Google counting numbers of products on category pages - what about pagination ?
Hi there, Whilst checking out the SERPS, as you do, I noticed that where our category page appears, google now seems to be counting the number of products (what it calls items) on the product page and displaying this in the 1st part of the description (see image attached). My problem is we employ pagination, so that our category page will have 15 items on it, then there are paginated results for the rest, with either ?page=2 or page-2/ etc. appended to the URL. Although this is only a minor issue, I was just wondering if there was a way to change the number of products displayed on that page to be the entire number of products in that category, is there a microformat markup or something that can over-ride what google has detected ? Furthermore is this system of pagination effective ? I have considered using javascript pagination, such that all products would be loaded on to the one page but hidden until 'paginated', but I was worried about having hidden elements on the page, and also the impact of load times. Although I think this may solve the problem and display the true number of products in a section! Any help much appreciated, Stuart b4urme.jpg
Technical SEO | | stukerr0 -
Why is Google only indexing 3 of 8 pages?
Hi everyone, I have a small 8 page website I launched about 6 months ago. For the life of me I can not figure out why google is only indexing 3 of the 8 pages. The pages are not duplicate content in any way. I have good internal linking structure. At this time I dont have many inbound links from others, that will come in time. Am I missing something here? Can someone give me a clue? Thanks Tim Site: www.jparizonaweddingvideos.com
Technical SEO | | fasctimseo0