For large sites, best practices for pages hidden behind internal search?
-
If a website has 1M+ pages, with most of them being hidden behind an internal search, what's the best way to get pages included in an engine's index?
Does a direct clickpath to those pages need to exist from the homepage or other major hub pages on the site?
Is submitting an XML sitemap enough?
-
Hello Vlevit,
You could do several things. I recommend giving Google your product feed, which should accomplish your goals. Another possible solution would be to make those search pages noindex,follow so they don't end up getting indexed, but Google can still use them for discovery.
Thanks for explaining the situation.
Below is more on submitting product feeds. It is for Google Product Search, but I would imagine the "link" field where you put the URL to your product detail page will help those pages get indexed in the standard results:
http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188494#USEverett
-
Everett, thanks for your reply. I understand the problems of showing internal search pages. I'm not looking to have internal search results being indexed, just the pages that the results link to. We're in eCommerce.
I was under the impression that there was a clever way to have the individual product pages indexed without establishing a direct click path, but best practices recommend otherwise.
Question answered. Thanks all for your help.
-
Hello Vlevit,
If you can be more specific we may be able to be of more help. Google doesn't want you to show internal search result pages, but if this is a different type of situation it there may be an exception. Are these search result pages, product pages, category pages, content pages.... is it an eCommerce site, community, content site... ?
Generally speaking, 1M+ pages with no links going into them and content that is either sparce/thin or partially/fully duplicated on other similar pages (like a search for widgets and a search for green widgets showing overlapping content) is exactly the type of thing that will get you in hot water that would affect even the rankings of your home page.
Do you feel like your question has been answered or would you like to be more specific about your site and goals?
Cheers,
Everett
-
This is what I was assuming, but was wondering if there was a clever way around creating direct click paths to those pages, while still maintaining their importance to the site. Thanks for the info.
-
Make sure they are part of the actual structure of your website, not just part of search. Meaning, you have to have links pointing at them. Also, you will also want to make sure that those pages have value.
-
Hi vlevit,
The best practice would be to exist a direct path of flow from index page. Something like: index -> category(filter) -> subcategory(filter) -> page/product. But in some cases xml sitemaps can also help you in indexing.
BUT, beware with to large XML sitemaps, try to create more then one sitemap, group them as possible.
A few very good resources can be found under the next links:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/solving-new-content-indexation-issues-for-large-b2b-websites
http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/29009/sitemaps-management-for-big-sites-tens-of-millions-of-pages
I hope it helpes,
Istvan
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
-
Sub domain? Micro site? What's the best solution?
My client currently has two websites to promote their art galleries in different parts of the country. They have bought a new domain (let's call it buyart.com) which they would eventually like to use as an e-commerce platform. They are wondering whether they keep their existing two gallery websites (non e-commerce) separate as they always have been, or somehow combine these into the new domain and have one overarching brand (buyart.com). I've read a bit on subdomains and microsites but am unsure at this stage what the best option would be, and what the pros and cons are. My feeling is to bring it all together under buyart.com so everything is in one place and creates a better user journey for anyone who would like to visit. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | WhitewallGlasgow0 -
Subpages have Page Authority of 1 behind Home with DA 50
How come that our subpages all have a PA 1 if the home got DA 50? technical specialities: Megamenue opens on click only Category pages dont exist (home/i-do-not-exist-as-page-category/PA-1-subpage) All subpages have a high amount of links to ressources (over 200) what would be the most obvious cause for the low PA? would the external link profile be the main reason? thanks in advance. I would be happy to answer your questions Kind regards
Technical SEO | | brainfruit0 -
Glossary Page - best practice
Hi guys, We have a glossary on our website. All terms are accessible via a 'view all' URL, however we also have each letter on their own URL, e.g /a. Currently the rel=canonical tag for all the individual letter pages points to the view all URL. I'm just wondering whether that is best practice or not, as currently not all the individual letter pages are being indexed. Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | brian-madden0 -
Robots.txt best practices & tips
Hey, I was wondering if someone could give me some advice on whether I should block the robots.txt file from the average user (not from googlebot, yandex, etc)? If so, how would I go about doing this? With .htaccess I'm guessing - but not an expert. What can people do with the information in the file? Maybe someone can give me some "best practices"? (I have a wordpress based website) Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
Removing links - Best practice
Hi I have noticed on webmaster that I have a lot of links to my sites from link building directories. Either I did this many years a go or somehow they've linked to me. Would links to link building directories harm my site? i.e linkspurt.com pingerati.net I have quite a few and just wondering what to do with them. Also I have some customer sites which are massive one site has 38,000 links coming to my site as I have put a credit that I built the site with a link back to mine. It has a low score in Google would this also harm my site? Any advise would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Help changing category and page titles on established Magento site.
Hi All, This is my first post, I've been a Pro member for a while now, read many posts but have never asked a question here. I have an established Magento site that I need to do a lot of SEO work on. I am a newbie at SEO, so I wanted to ask for advice here. I just changed one of the category names, the url, meta title, and meta description. When making the change I selected the checkbox in the Magento backend that says "Create Permanent Redirect for Old URL" Example:
Technical SEO | | TrulyLuna
Old Category: http://www.domain.com/old-category-name.html
New Category: http://www.domain.com/new-category-name.html Everything worked fine with the exception of one alarming thing... I lost all of the page authority for the category itself and all of the sub categories and pages below it. Now the category and all pages below it show (on the moz toolbar) a PA of 1 and 0 links and 0 domains. I updated the sitemap. I did not do a 301 redirect in the .htaccess, I only chose the option to redirect on the Magento backend when changing the name and url of the category. I need to change a lot of other category and page names and urls but now I'm a bit gun shy, as I do not want to do something that will damage what little page rank I have at the moment. I'm looking for some advice from one of you guys who might be able to help me do this the correct way. I did some research on Google, but I'm still not sure of the correct method to accomplish this. Thanks in advance for any help that you can offer.0 -
Old proudct pages - eComm Site
Hello, Geeks.com currently has approx. 194k pages in Google index. (approx. 30k suppl.) http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ageeks.com+inurl%3Aadditem&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Ltp&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=site:www.geeks.com%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=876898a2ea0c82c7&biw=1512&bih=641 We have many thousands of old product urls which have gone out of stock, never to "see the light of day" again. 14 years worth! Should we be 301'ing all old products pages that go out of stock, if we know for certain we will never carry that SKU again? If we were to do a "mass" 301 of 30k+ urls how would google or other SE's react to that? Could there be any negative implications to doing so? What is considered best practice for eComm sites, as I imagine we are not alone with this type of situation. Thank you in advance. Michael B.
Technical SEO | | JustinGeeks0 -
Whats the best tools for site architecture
Look for tools that can visualise a sites architecture (idealy automated). Also looking for tools that can visualise internal linking sturures
Technical SEO | | Motionlab0