Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Community!

I am in the process of updating sitemaps and am trying to obtain a standard for what is considered "strong" crawl budget? Every documentation I've found includes how to make it better or what to watch out for. However, I'm looking for an amount to obtain for (ex: 60% of the sitemap has been crawled, 100%, etc.)

Hi Everyone! I just transitioned into SEO in the medical spectrum and have never come across such long names. In terms of recommendations for character counts in title tags, what would be the recommendation? Write until it gets truncated (which is current state)? Use the abbreviation? Try to ensure the "plain language" words appear towards the front? Any viewpoints would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi Mozers,

Is there any benefit of having the date that the content was updated displayed at the very top of a content page rather than at the bottom?

Would this impact our EAT?

Thanks,

Hi All,I've got a question about measuring the impact of schema. We implemented FAQ schema on a few pages such that the questions and answers written on the page are now displayed directly on the SERP.Google Search Console now provides both total page clicks and rich results clicks (under Search Appearance).  To get total clicks on the page, do you simply add up the total page and rich results clicks? Or do the rich results clicks represent interactions with the accordion, rather than a click through to the page? And if both clicks are represented differently, does that mean that the page is only sometimes being rendered on the SERP as a rich result?Any guidance would be appreciated!Thanks.

Hi Mozers,

The interactive SERP feature that appears when you're searching for hotels nearby.  It lets you input specific dates  and number of adults and then lists different hotels  nearby, their ratings and where they are located on a map.

Two questions:

1. What is that called?
2. How do hotels get pulled in? Schema?

Thanks!

Very helpful, thank you!

Hi Mozers,

I have a question about the news that Google Chrome will start blocking mixed content starting in December 2019.  That starting in December 2019, users that are presented insecure content will be presented a toggle allowing those Chrome users to unblock the insure resources that Chrome is blocking. And in January 2020, Google will remove that toggle option an will just start blocking mixed content or insecure web pages.

Not sure what this means. What are the implications of this for a HTTPS page that has an HTTP link?

Thanks,

Yael

Has anyone seen a big fluctuation in Domain Rank or fluctuations in keyword rankings b/c of BERT?

Hi Mozers,

There are over 200 pages from our site that have a meta tag "noindex" but are STILL being indexed.

What else can I do to remove them from the Index?

Thank you! Now that I've read your response, the answer seems so obvious! Very helpful.

Hi Mozers,

We have images on their own separate pages that are then pulled onto content pages.

Should the standalone pages be indexable?

On the one hand, it seems good to have an image on it's own page, with it's own title.

On the other hand, it may be better SEO for crawler to find the image on a content page dedicated to that topic.

Unsure.

Would appreciate any guidance!

Yael

Hi Mozers,

Are in-page tabs still detrimental for SEO?

In-page tabs: allow you to  alternate between views within the same context, not to navigate to different areas.  As in one long HTML page that just looks like it's divided into different pages via tabs that you can click between.

Each tab has it's own URL, which I guess is for analytics tracking purposes?

https://XXX

https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=1

https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=2

https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=3

Hi Mozers,

At the beginning of a web page, is it better to have a linked Table of Contents of sorts to begin the page (bulleted list of topics that the page addresses that are made up of jump links to different parts of the page) or just start the page with sentences of content?

Is one approach better for SEO?

Thanks,

Yael

Hi All,

I know that the sitemaps.xml URL must be findable but what about the sitemaps/pageinstructions.xml URL?

Can we safely noindex the sitemaps/pageinstructions.xml URL?

Thanks!

Yael

Hi Mozers,

Does having a Google+ page really impact SEO?

Thanks,

Yael

Hi Mozers,

I'm using search operators for a count of how many pages have been indexed for each section of the site. I was able to download the first 1000 pages from Google Search Console but there are more than 1000 pages indexed, so I'm using operators for a count (even if I can't get the complete list of indexed URLs). [Although, if there is a better way, PLEASE let me know!]

Anyway, in terms of search operators: from my understanding, the more general the URL, the more results should come up. However, when I put in the domain site:www.XXX it gives me FEWER results than when I put in site:www.XXX/. When I add the backslash to the end of the domain, it gives me MORE results. And when I put in site:www.AAA/BBB/CC it gives me MORE results than when I put in site:www.AAA/BBB.

What's with this?

Yael

Thank for your advice, I was thinking the same thing!

Hi Mozers,

We're trying to come up with an SEO friendly URL.

Does it make sense to re-order primary-secondary-tumor to secondary-primary-tumor because "primary tumor" has high volumes and thus those two words should be adjacent?

Any advice is appreciated!

Yael

Hi Mozers,

Fetch as Google is showing Tablet view and not Desktop view. Does anyone know why this is? And does that mean that Googlebot is reading the Tablet version instead of the Desktop version (same HTML but different visualization)?

Thanks!!

Yael

Also helpful, thanks! Yael

Really helpful thanks! Yael

Very helpful, thanks! Yael

Hi Mozers,

Is it true that Google will fill in search forms and thus generate potentially thousands of pages by itself?

We have a spike in number of pages indexed and it corresponds with the time we added an advanced search form to the site...

Thanks for the advice!

Yael

Hi Mozers,

We recently canonicalized a few thousand URLs but when I search for these pages using the site: operator I can see that they are all still in Google's index. Why is that?

Is it reasonable to expect that they would be taken out of the index? Or should we only expect that they won't rank as high as the canonical URLs?

Thanks!

Hi Mozers,

When optimizing videos and infographics does it helps to put the word "video" or "infographic" in the browser title and H1?

Any guidance is much appreciated!

Yael

Hi Mozers,

We have a page that's ranking #1 for several very high volume queries but the bounce rate is 90%.

It's puzzling that the page is ranking so well even though the bounce rate is exceedingly high. The algorithm takes user engagement metrics into account so you would think that it those metrics would push the page down.

Having said that, the page does have lots of backlinks. So maybe it's ranking despite the fact that people are clicking out?

Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks,

Yael

Great answer. Thanks so much!!!

Hi Mozers,

The site that I work on has two pages with very similar content but written with a different sophistication of language. One page is written in a simple, easy-to-understand voice and the second is written at a high level for researchers.

My question is: does the Google algorithm really understand the difference in sophistication and then pivot results such that the more sophisticated page shows up for researchers and the simplistic page shows up for non-researchers (thereby eliminating or greatly reducing competition between these two pages)?

Thank you!

Thanks!

Got it, thanks!!!

Hi Mozers,

We have staff profile pages w/ one main URL and then URLs with query parameters and jump links to take you to different parts of the page.

The longer URLs with parameters canonicalize to the main pages but should they also be nonidexed?

Thanks,

Yael

Hi Mozers,

**We have a glossary of terms made up of a main page that lists out ALL of the terms, and then individual pages per alphabet letter that limit the results to that specific alphabet letter. These pages look like this: **

https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=A

https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=B

https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=C

https://www.XXXX.XXX/publications/dictionaries/XXX-terms?expand=D

etc.

If I'd like Google to remove all of these "expand=" pages from the index, such that only the main page is indexed, what is the exact parameter that I should ask Google to ignore in Search Console?

"expand=" ?

Just want to make sure! Thanks for the help!!!

Hi,

We have dynamic listing pages that are sometimes populated and sometimes not populated. They are clinical trial results pages for disease types, some of which don't always have trials open. This means that sometimes the CMS produces a blank page -- pages that are then flagged as thin content.

We're considering implementing a conditional noindex -- where the page is indexed only if there are results.

However, I'm concerned that this will be confusing to Google and send a negative ranking signal.

Any advice would be super helpful.

Thanks!

Hi,

We have dynamic listing pages that are sometimes populated and sometimes not populated. They are clinical trial results pages for disease types, some of which don't always have trials open. This means that sometimes the CMS produces a blank page -- pages that are then flagged as thin content.

We're considering implementing a conditional noindex -- where the page is indexed only if there are results.

However, I'm concerned that this will be confusing to Google and send a negative ranking signal.

Any advice would be super helpful.

Thanks!

That's a great point -- I've been thinking about that. My only concern is that doing a conditional noindex, might send confusing messages to Google. What are your thoughts on this? Appreciate the help!

Maybe it wasn't clear from my response, but the new information that I posted in response to your answer was discovered AFTER I posted my question. Definitely appreciated the advice -- thanks for your time.

Thanks for the answers!

For the time being, we unfortunately can't noindex because the backup site is used frequently. We need that to automatically kick in whenever the domain has problems. It looks like these pages are showing up externally because the server is hosted externally. Once we move to the cloud, this should no longer be an issue.

Hi Mozers,

We have dynamic listing pages that pull in clinical trial results for specific disease types. Sometimes diseases have clinical trials and sometimes they don't. This means that sometimes the page will have zero results and sometimes it will return results.

We have a sizable number of these so that when there are zero results, these pages look like thin content.

What is the recommended method of dealing with this?

Is there a way of doing a conditional noindex where the page is indexed if results are pulled in and and not indexed when the page returns zero results?

If we can do this, should we? Will it confuse Google and send negative signals?

Any guidance/thoughts are much appreciated!

Yael

Hi, Google is indexing pages from our backup server. Is this a duplicate content issue? There are essentially two versions of our entire domain indexed by Google. How do people typically handle this? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks, Yael

I work for a large organization with a number of locations. There is a Google My Business listing for us, under our umbrella name, that lists an old address (building we no longer occupy) and says that we are "permanently closed".

I believe this is an unverified listing because there is an "own this listing?" link in it.

In order to take control of the listing, Google gives us three options: call, text or snail mail. The number is an automated line so calling and texting aren't going to work and snail mail wouldn't work b/c we're no longer in the building.

Anyone know how we can take control of this listing so that it doesn't look like we're "permanently closed?"

Hi Moz Community. Has anyone noticed a pattern in the websites that Google pulls in to populate knowledge Panels? For example, for a lot of queries Google keeps pulling data from a specific source over and over again, and the data shown in the Knowledge Panel isn't on the target page. Is it possible that Google simply favors some sites over others and no matter what you do, you'll never make it into the Knowledge box? Thanks.

Hi NorthStarInbound, thanks for your response.

By "retiring" i mean deleting. They're old URLs that we'd like to get rid of and just let the new pages stand on their own.

But we would be giving up the authority that those pages have accumulated. The question is, how much authority is at stake? How large of a hit are we going to take? How can we measure this?

Any advice is helpful! Thanks, yael

Hello!

So, we migrated our website in 2015 to the "new version" and we now have 20,000 old URLs that we'd like to officially retire. the only traffic coming to these pages is obviously from backlinks pointing at our site.

How do i gauge the hit that our website will take once we retire these URLs?

Is there a tool that will allow me to look at referral traffic numbers per URL so that i know how much traffic we'll be losing?

any advice would be helpful!

thanks!

yael

we are creating a video based off the content on one of our web pages. i know it's probably better for the video to be embedded on the same page as the article but if they aren't, what should we do to make sure that we aren't diluting our ranking power?  Both pages will be going after the same key phrase...

If a website did an HTTP to HTTPS migration using 302 re-directs, that were corrected to 301s about 4 months later, what is the expected impact? Will the website see a full recovery or has the damage been done? Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this...