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.
Best way to noindex long dynamic urls?
-
I just got a Mozcrawl back and see lots of errors for overly dynamic urls. The site is a villa rental site that gives users the ability to search by bedroom, amenities, price, etc, so I'm wondering what the best way to keep these types of dynamically generated pages with urls like /property-search-page/?location=any&status=any&type=any&bedrooms=9&bathrooms=any&min-price=any&max-price=any from indexing.
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated : )
-
If you have a page that lists all the villas outside the search results, then you don't lose anything by blocking that folder on the robots.txt
But still, somebody, the guy that wrote the custom theme knows how to do the changes needed.
If you want I can help you with it, for free
Just PM me (I'll need FTP access). -
Having some trouble... Because the site is Wordpress, which dynamically generates pages, there is no /property-search-page/ nor is there a property-search-page.php in the editor files, so the only option I have is to put disallow: /property-search-page/ in the robots.txt file, correct?
-
You guys rock! I'll try these out tomorrow. Thanks a million.
-
If you have a /all-villas/ page then you should go ahead and noindex the search results as Google Guidelines suggests. You can either do it in the /property-search-page/ or using the robots.txt file.
In the robots.txt, add:
disallow: /property-search-page/
The robots method guarantees that no page inside that folder is indexed or even crawled (including /property-search-page/?whatever).
Or on the page /property-search-page/ you can add the meta noindex as such:
Then check if that meta tag is shown in all search results (just check a couple of them).
Hope that works!
-
Yes, it will. Also looks like custom code, it depends on how the header is coded. But it should work. Test it, if you can. This should solve your problems relatively easily. If nothing works, you can always do a robots.txt deny for /property-search-page/?* pages, but that's not a recommended solution. Try the canonical way to see if it works first.
-
We already have Yoast installed, but the errors are still showing up in the Moz report.
To clarify, let's assume we have another page that lists all the villas (/all-villas/). If I go to the property-search-page php file and canonical=rel it to /all-villas/, will it canonical=rel all /property-search-page/?whatever pages to the /all-villas/ page?
-
Well, that will make a little easier from one side and harder from the other.
You can try installing SEO by Yoast, that will put all the canonical tags for you, however, I think it won't link the search result pages to the canonical page that lists them all.
That might require a little coding.
If there's another page, outside /property-search-page/ folder that lists all villas, then you can disallow that folder in the robots.txt file, and that should fix it. If there isn't, well, then you will need to edit the /property-search-page/ page to use a static canonical tag that points to the page that lists all the villas removing any kind of filtering.
Hope that helps!
-
Thanks for the response. The site is Wordpress - is there an easy way to write some sort of rule that would canonical any of these types of pages to a category page? How would you go about doing that?
-
Thanks for the response. The site is Wordpress - is there an easy way to write some sort of rule that would canonical any of these types of pages to a category page? How would you go about doing that?
-
I agree with Federico one hundred percent. Figure out what your primary SEO friendly URLs are for these kinds of pages and canonical them back to that page.
-
I wouldn't put a noindex meta on them, instead I would consider using a canonical tag pointing to the page that lists all the villas.
Anyway, what programming language are you using?
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
-
Dynamically Inserting Noindex With Javascript
Hello, I have a broken plugin creating hundreds of WP-Content directory pages being indexed by Google. I can not access the source code of these pages to add a noindex to them. The page URL's all have the plugin name within them. In order to resolve the issue, I wrote a solution with javascript to dynamically add in a noindex tag to any URL containing the plugin name. Would this noindex be respected by Google and is there a way to immediately check that it is respected? Currently, I can not delete the plugin due to issues with it's php. If you would like to view the code: https://codepen.io/trodrick/pen/Gwwaej?editors=0010 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs
I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
Technical SEO | | btreloar
Disallow: ?Page=
Disallow: ?Page=*
Disallow: ?Page=
Or something else?0 -
How to handle dynamic product url that changes regularly
Hey Moz, It's actually my first post - although I look at the Q&As on a daily basis! I was hoping to get your opinions on how to handle dynamic product url that can change regularly. Before we start, our product page urls get populated by the product titles. So the situation is this. Let’s say we have a product url: /product/12345-abcde-fghj/ Then the client decides to change the title a week later, so the url changes with it to): /listing/12345-klm-qjk Another week later, the agent changes to: /listing/12345-jkhfk-jhf-kjdhfkjdhf So to note, the product ID will always remain the same. Naturally, 301 redirecting every time would cause a bit of page authority to be lost every time 301ed. Also potentially creating new a few hundreds of 301 redirect daily sounds totally mental. (I have been informed by the dev we expect a few hundreds to change url daily) Although I understand there’s no limit on how many 301s you can have on a single domain, this would look completely unnatural - really not ideal. So the potential solution we thought was: we’ll keep the original url, and make sure that is the only url that will get indexed**/product/12345-abcde-fghj/**and put canonical tag on any of the new urls, directing to the original url. The problem we will have then is that the most current url may not exactly match the description of the product -wouldn’t be ideal for ux. Has anyone had dealing with issues like this in the past? Would love to get your input! Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | MH-UK0 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Best Way To Clean Up Unruly SubDomain?
Hi, I have several subdomains that present no real SEO value, but are being indexed. They don't earn any backlinks either. What's the best way of cleaning them up? I was thinking the following: 1. Verify them all in Webmaster Tools. 2. Remove all URLs from the index via the Removal Tool in WMT 3. Add site-wide no-index, follow directive. Also, to remove the URLs in WMT, you usually have to block the URLs via /robots.txt. If I'd like to keep Google crawling through the subdomains and remove their URLs, is there a way to do so?
Technical SEO | | RocketZando0 -
Best URL-structure for ecommerce store?
What structure will recommend to the product pages? Lets make an example with the keyword "Luxim FZ200" With category in url:
Technical SEO | | gojesper
www.myelectronicshop.com/digital-cameras/luxim-FZ200.html With /product prefix:
www.myelectronicshop.com/product/luxim-FZ200.html Without category in url:
www.myelectronicshop.com/luxim-FZ200.html I have read in a blog post that Paddy Moogan recommend /lluxim-FZ200.html - i think i prefer this version too. But I can see that many of the bigger ecommerce stores are using a /product prefix before the product name. What is the reason for this? and what is best practice?0