Do dropdowns count as unique content?
-
My current site has some extensive unique database content by "widget" type. Currently we display this info into HTML 's, but we are considering utilizing this data in a dropdown field on each respective widget page.
I want to ensure we don't have thin content...Does the content within the <option>tags on a dropdown count towards unique content?</option>
-
As long as the search engines can crawl it, I doubt that one format would cause your content to be considered "more unique" than the other - it either is unique or it isn't, and the content itself is the same either way. Since it seems like the drop-down is a more user-friendly solution, that's what I'd do.
If you're concerned that your content won't be robust enough to rank for a term, I'd consider adding some additional, relevant text that contains the keywords you're targeting rather than trying to tweak the format of the same text - maybe via a blog post? But if you are finding your content to be unique enough now, in the tables, without adding extra text then I don't think switching it to be in a drop-down is going to wreck that.
-
This is good advice for checking to see if it counts at all, but I guess there is no way to definitively know whether date in a table trumps a dropdown without A/B testing.
-
From everything you're saying, it looks like search engines will be able to crawl the content either way (as long as you make sure the dropdowns are using search-engine-friendly code like HTML or CSS and not JavaScript or Ajax # tags).
Once the site launches, you can double-check that the content's being indexed by doing a site: query in Google that contains a large chunk of the text contained in the dropdown.
-
Not yet. We are still designing wireframes.
I am wondering if the data in a combobox like below would count as unique data:
http://miamicoder.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/image_12.png (possible new display)
We currently have our data displayed in HTML <tables>that I don't believe to be as user friendly, but do count as unique content.</tables>
http://www.learn-html-tutorial.com/Images/FormattedTable.gif
(assuming the data is the same in both pics above)
-
I'm having a hard time picturing what you're describing - do you have an example URL I could take a look at?
-
I was thinking the same...Therefore I am considering populating both my dropdown and a data like my current site to ensure unique content is not too thin and I get long tail searches on some of the more unique product listings.
-
If you can view the code when using a "view source" or similar then the code can be crawled. That being said I don't think an option button would be considered content by a search engine so it wouldn't be unique.
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
-
Hide mobile content element
Hello, We are optimizing our mobile (responsive) website at this moment and we want to change some elements on the productpage of our webshop in order of rank. This is the outcome of a data analysis which proves a change in rank of order will result in a higher conversion rate. No doubt. By technical limitations there is no other option but duplicating the element 'product description' in the source of the page to be able to show in on the spot on the product page we like to. Because our webshop is responsive we can not just move the element to the right spot for mobile because the tablet and desktop version then will change as well. My question is: will it be a problem for Google if we hide the original element of the product description on mobile pages by using the bootstrap class "hidden-xs" and duplicate it on another spot in the page to show it with the "visible-xs" class? My concern is that this will create duplicate content and hiding content for Google is not particularly good. On the other hand, I think Google is smart enough to understand that this is not to manipulate visitors or rankings, but this is only for a different look of the mobile website. I hope you guys can give me some good advice.
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
Thanks in advance.
Marcel0 -
Tips and duplicate content
Hello, we have a search site that offers tips to help with search/find. These tips are organized on the site in xml format with commas... of course the search parameters are duplicated in the xml so that we have a number of tips for each search parameter. For example if the parameter is "dining room" we might have 35 pieces of advice - all less than a tweet long. My question - will I be penalized for keyword stuffing - how can I avoid this?
Technical SEO | | acraigi0 -
Syndicated Content Appearing Above Original
Hi. I run a travel blog and my content is often re-posted by related sites with a backlink to my content (and full credit etc) but still ranks above my article in Google. Any ideas what I can do to stop this happening? Thanks
Technical SEO | | ben10000 -
How to get rid of duplicate content
I have duplicate content that looks like http://deceptionbytes.com/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=932fea0640143bf08fe157d3570792a56dcc1284 - however I have 50 of these all with different numbers on the end. Does this affect the search engine optimization and how can I disallow this in my robots.txt file?
Technical SEO | | Mishelm1 -
Duplicate Page Content and Titles
A few weeks ago my error count went up for Duplicate Page Content and Titles. 4 errors in all. A week later the errors were gone... But now they are back. I made changes to the Webconfig over a month ago but nothing since. SEOmoz is telling me the duplicate content is this http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ and http://www.antiquebanknotes.com Thanks for any advise! This is the relevant web.config. <rewrite><rules><rule name="CanonicalHostNameRule1"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www.antiquebanknotes.com$" negate="true"></add></conditions>
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
<action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.antiquebanknotes.com="" {r:1"="">http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/{R:1}" />
</action></match></rule>
<rule name="Default Page" enabled="true" stopprocessing="true"><match url="^default.aspx$"><conditions logicalgrouping="MatchAll"><add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="GET"></add></conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="/"></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite>0 -
Duplicate content error from url generated
We are getting a duplicate content error, with "online form/" being returned numerous times. Upon inspecting the code, we are calling an input form via jQuery which is initially called by something like this: Opens Form Why would this be causing it the amend the URL and to be crawled?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Duplicate content handling.
Hi all, I have a site that has a great deal of duplicate content because my clients list the same content on a few of my competitors sites. You can see an example of the page here: http://tinyurl.com/62wghs5 As you can see the search results are on the right. A majority of these results will also appear on my competitors sites. My homepage does not seem to want to pass link juice to these pages. Is it because of the high level of Dup Content or is it because of the large amount of links on the page? Would it be better to hide the content from the results in a nofollowed iframe to reduce duplicate contents visibilty while at the same time increasing unique content with articles, guides etc? or can the two exist together on a page and still allow link juice to be passed to the site. My PR is 3 but I can't seem to get any of my internal pages(except a couple of pages that appear in my navigation menu) to budge of the PR0 mark even if they are only one click from the homepage.
Technical SEO | | Mulith0 -
Is this considered as duplicate content?
One of my clients has a template page they have used repeatedly each time they have a new news item. The template includes a two-paragraph customer quote/testimonial for the company. So, they now have 100+ pages with the same customer quote. The rest of the page content / body copy is unique. Is there any likelihood of this being considered duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110