Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Has anyone ever tested to see if having an ads.txt file provided any SEO lift?
-
I know that the ads.txt system is designed to prevent ad fraud and technically has nothing to do with search.
That said, the presence of such a file would seem to be an indicator of overall site quality because it would show that a site owner wants to participate in a fraud-free system.
Has anyone ever tested that? If so, they don't seem to have published their results. Maybe it's a secret weapon that some pros are using and not sharing?
-
Martijn,
I shouldn't have called it a "secret weapon" because an ads.txt file is public.
My question is really that given that Google looks at everything, it would be surprising if the search algos didn't check to see if there's an ads.txt file on the site, and give that some weight.
Anyone else looked at this or tested it?
-
Hi Scott, Interesting line of thought I must say, but unfortunately ads.txt is not a factor as there are also tons of sites out there that don't participate at all in using ads or anything of that nature that then immediately would be facing negative consequences of not using this file. I've worked for some sites that had this file up but first of all: the change that you make would be so small to dedicate just to that file that it would never ever be able to call itself a secret weapon in my opinion.
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
-
Website rankings drop significantly after moving to new hosting provider
My website - www.isacleanse.co.nz has dropped from being top10 rankings for all of my keywords to not even being in top 50 after just checking now. It used to be hosted on: www.1stdomains.nz
Web Design | | IsaCleanse
It got migrated to Sitground servers about a month ago See attached screenshot - would moving hosting provider cause such a huge drop? Or would there be anything else I should be looking at ? J2ahi0 -
Woocommerce SEO and Product attributes
Hi friends! I have a question that is advanced Woocommerce and seo-related.
Web Design | | JustinMurray
I'm seeing http://www.mywebsitex.com/pa_keyword/indexed in Google, but it cannot be properly optimized, and I would prefer to have a WordPress Page indexed for that keyword instead, which also lists those products and can be fully seo optimized. Woocommerce SEO plugin by Yoast lacks documentation and I have no clue if that would even fix this. I do have the Taxonomy (pa_keyword) set to not include these in the sitemap, but there doesn't seem to be a way to noindex/nofollow product attributes.
1. How can I best accomplish this?
2. Why are product attributes indexed by default?0 -
Does an age verification home page hurt SEO?
There's a microbrewery in our area that just launched its first website. It has the "verify your age" homepage (which is not really their homepage, but I don't know what it's called) before you can enter. It looks like this: http://angrychairbrewing.com/ Anyway, does this hurt them at all from a rankings standpoint? Also, assuming bots/spiders/ROGER can crawl sites like this, (which I think they would have to be able to do) how do they get around this verification? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Best SEO practice - Umbrella brand with several domains
Hi, we have several blogs and comparison sites on specific topics. All the domains rank on top positions in very competitive niche markets. We think that we can get more profit out of the domains when we put them under an umbrella brand. Customers that visit domain A can then also find products easily on domain B. We see this for example on health.com, with several brands in the top. To maintain or improve our rankings i'm looking for specific information for the link structure. For example, is it better to have the 'about us'/rel=author on each domain, with contributors on that specific domain or is it better to have them all in the (umbrella) brand domain. At the moment we have the structure like this: domainA.com, domainA.com/blog, domainA.com/about-us and domainB.com, domainB.com/blog, domainB.com/about-us. I think to maintain the rankings it is best to keep specific content (like blog/ about us) on the domain. So is it the best to just do side wide links with a logo (like health.com) and what about hosting? We work with wordpress, so all domains will be hosted on one ip? when we use the multiple site option of WP? All information on this topic is more than welcome 🙂
Web Design | | remkoallertz0 -
B2C directory website adding B2B ecommerce sub-domain
Hey fellow Mozzers, Just got back from Mozcon and enjoyed getting to know a handful of you. I do in house SEO for a B2B wholesaler. We have a B2C website directory for homeowners to locate contractors to work on their home. On the site we have a products section which includes tech specs but not pricing. Our contractors have been asking us to add the ability to purchase their items online, so we are wanting to add a B2B sub-domain (store.domain.com) to our website for the contractors to purchase products online. We do not want consumers to be able to purchase the items and will have pricing behind a log in. I have a few questions that I'm hoping you might be able to answer: 1. What would be the best practice to not have duplicate content errors with products that are listed on both sites? Should we rel-canonical items shown on both domains or do something else?
Web Design | | AC_Pro
2. We are not against having the new site be crawled, but will Google be upset/ding rankings because pricing is behind a log-in? Are there certain best-practices for B2B ecommerce sites?
3. Do you know of any other sites that have done this/do you have any recommendations on how to best implement this?0 -
White Text / Black Background & SEO Impact
Does anyone know of any testing / studies with evidence that Google prefers dark text on a light background vs. light text on a dark background? I have a website that currently has light text on a black background, and really like the way it looks, but am concerned that the style may be hurting SEO. Moreover, redesigning something inverse with the same quality would be a large project and fairly costly, so I'd like to make sure the benefit will really be worth the cost before moving forward.
Web Design | | Bromtec0 -
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate
Web Design | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Seo and CSS media queries
Hello to all participants! I'm starting on responsive design with css media queries and I was wondering if hidding content can, in this case, can also be bad for seo? I know that hidding content is bad (eg. display: none;), but is it also like that with responsive design or does Google see it other way? If I have a news column with title, image and text for 1024px and hide the text and image leaving just the title for 768px, or smaller, will Google consider this black hat and will it be bad for seo? are there any articles I can read about this subject, and other similar subjects? sorry for my english 🙂 thanks
Web Design | | Lusodados1
