Why Does Ebay Allow Internal Search Result Pages to be Indexed?
-
Click this Google query: https://www.google.com/search?q=les+paul+studio
Notice how Google has a rich snippet for Ebay saying that it has 229 results for Ebay's internal search result page: http://screencast.com/t/SLpopIvhl69z
Notice how Sam Ash's internal search result page also ranks on page 1 of Google.
I've always followed the best practice of setting internal search result pages to "noindex." Previously, our company's many Magento eCommerce stores had the internal search result pages set to be "index," and Google indexed over 20,000 internal search result URLs for every single site. I advised that we change these to "noindex," and impressions from Search Queries (reported in Google Webmaster Tools) shot up on 7/24 with the Panda update on that date. Traffic didn't necessarily shoot up...but it appeared that Google liked that we got rid of all this thin/duplicate content and ranked us more (deeper than page 1, however).
Even Dr. Pete advises no-indexing internal search results here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
So, why is Google rewarding Ebay and Sam Ash with page 1 rankings for their internal search result pages? Is it their domain authority that lets them get away with it? Could it be that noindexing internal search result pages is NOT best practice? Is the game different for eCommerce sites?
Very curious what my fellow professionals think.
Thanks,
Dan -
I am looking into this a lot too. Our company has 1.2 million pages indexed in Google. That sounds good except that 1.03 M are from our search results pages. I am advising we do not keep all the search result pages index; the issues is we are making a lot of money off of them. What did you find worked best for you? what did you decide to do?
-
I would agree that eBay's search results are like categories (since Google doesn't have a category page for every niche)...and when you combine this with the fact that their "content pages" are auctions that are typically only live for 5-10 days...then it makes sense for eBay.
But SamAsh.com and GuitarCenter.com both set their internal search results pages to be indexed by search engines...and Google is ranking SamAsh.com's internal search page on page 1 of Google in my example above (reference this Google query, and this screenshot). What I notice about their site is that it looks like they are using internal search result pages as category pages. See their Gibson page. The URL structure is the same as if you were to search for something on their site.
So, perhaps SamAsh.com and eBay.com are both treating their search result pages as category pages...since they don't have true category pages for these niches...and thus allowing them to be indexed?
If this is a good strategy, then I'm inclined to think that sites that do have a lot of category pages would want to keep internal search result pages set to "noindex" so as not to duplicate the topics covered in multiple pages. Example: if we have a Watercolor Painting category page...then we wouldn't want a Watercolor internal search result page to be indexed.
Note: None of this even addresses the "lack of unique content" on internal search result pages, which like "Tag" pages on Wordpress sites, I'm of the understanding that this can lead to Panda penalties.
-
Personally, I would test both ways. A lot of SEO value can be found in the long tail, and when someone gets super specific often times they are ready to buy. When I am specific I often find Ebay's search results pages coming up.
For ebay it looks like, your example, these search results act much like a category for a user. If I was looking for Gibson Les Paul, it wouldn't be a bad user experience for me to land on a page full of those guitars. Each item on that page is likely unique and gives me more options. Now if the search was for something different - like a website that only sold unscented white candles, I may not want to land on those results in which case I might go with your other method.
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
-
Pillar pages and blog pages
Hello, I was watching this video about pillar pages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db3TpDZf_to and tried to apply it to my self but find it impossible to do (but maybe I am looking at it the wrong way). Let's say I want to rank on "Normandy bike tou"r. I created a pillar page about "Normandy bike tour" what would be the topics of the subpages boosting that pillar page. I know that it should be questions people have but in the tourism industry they don't have any, they just want us to make them dream !! I though about doing more general blog pages about things such as : Places to rent a bike in Normandy or in XYZ city ? ( related to biking) Or the landing sites in Normandy ? (not related to biking) Is it the way to do it, what do you recommend ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Internal link from blog content to commercial pages risks?
Hi guys, Has anyone seen cases where a site has been impacted negatively from internal linking from blog content to commercial based pages (e.g. category pages). Anchor text is natural and the links improve user experience (i.e it makes sense to add them, they're not forced). Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
What's the best way to check Google search results for all pages NOT linking to a domain?
I need to do a bit of link reclamation for some brand terms. From the little bit of searching I've done, there appear to be several thousand pages that meet the criteria, but I can already tell it's going to be impossible or extremely inefficient to save them all manually. Ideally, I need an exported list of all the pages mentioning brand terms not linking to my domain, and then I'll import them into BuzzStream for a link campaign. Anybody have any ideas about how to do that? Thanks! Jon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonMorrow0 -
To index or de-index internal search results pages?
Hi there. My client uses a CMS/E-Commerce platform that is automatically set up to index every single internal search results page on search engines. This was supposedly built as an "SEO Friendly" feature in the sense that it creates hundreds of new indexed pages to send to search engines that reflect various terminology used by existing visitors of the site. In many cases, these pages have proven to outperform our optimized static pages, but there are multiple issues with them: The CMS does not allow us to add any static content to these pages, including titles, headers, metas, or copy on the page The query typed in by the site visitor always becomes part of the Title tag / Meta description on Google. If the customer's internal search query contains any less than ideal terminology that we wouldn't want other users to see, their phrasing is out there for the whole world to see, causing lots and lots of ugly terminology floating around on Google that we can't affect. I am scared to do a blanket de-indexation of all /search/ results pages because we would lose the majority of our rankings and traffic in the short term, while trying to improve the ranks of our optimized static pages. The ideal is to really move up our static pages in Google's index, and when their performance is strong enough, to de-index all of the internal search results pages - but for some reason Google keeps choosing the internal search results page as the "better" page to rank for our targeted keywords. Can anyone advise? Has anyone been in a similar situation? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
No index.no follow certain pages
Hi, I want to stop Google et al from finding a some pages within my website. the url is www.mywebsite.com/call_backrequest.php?rid=14 As these pages are creating a lot of duplicate content issues. Would the easiest solution be to place a 'Nofollow/Noindex' META tag in page www.mywebsite.com/call_backrequest.php many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wood1e19680 -
Page Indexed but not Cached
A section of pages on my site are indexed (I know because they appear in SERPs if I copy and paste a sentence from the content), however according to the text-only cached version of the page they are not being read by Google.Why are they indexed event hough it seems like Google is not reading them..... or is Google in fact reading this text even though it seems like they should not be?Thanks for your assistance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Why do I have better results with absolute search
Hi, I completed the optimization of my website, and while my rankings have improved, i seem to have consistently better resultats with absolute search terms: ex: i'm better ranked on "word1 word2" than just word1 word2 without the guillemets. Do you have any idea why? As most people perform search without guillemets, i would like to improve my rankings with these searches too. thanks, cedric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartgrains0