Crawling/indexing of near duplicate product pages
-
Hi,
Hope someone can help me out here. This is the current situation:
We sell stones/gravel/sand/pebbles etc. for gardens. I will take a type of pebbles and the corresponding pages/URL's to illustrate my question --> black beach pebbles.
- We have a 'top' product page for black beach pebbles on which you can find different types of quantities (differing from 20kg untill 1600 kg).
- There is not any search volume related to the different quantities
- The 'top' page does not link to the pages for the different quantities
- The content on the pages for the different quantities is not exactly the same (different price + slightly different content). But a lot of the content is the same.
Current situation:
- Most pages for the different quantities do not have internal links (about 95%)- But the sitemap does contain all of these pages.
- Because the sitemap contains all these URL's, google frequently crawls them (I checked the logfiles) and has indexed them.
Problems:
- Google spends its time crawling irrelevant pages --> our entire website is not that big, so these quantity URL's kind of double the total number of URL's.
- Having url's in the sitemap that do not have an internal link is a problem on its own
- All these pages are indexed so all sorts of gravel/pebbles have near duplicates.
My solution:
- remove these URL's from the sitemap --> that will probably stop Google from regularly crawling these pages
- Putting a canonical on the quantity pages pointing to the top-product page. --> that will hopefully remove the irrelevant (no search volume) near duplicates from the index
My questions:
- To be able to see the canonical, google will need to crawl these pages. Will google still do that after removing them from the sitemap?
- Do you agree that these pages are near duplicates and that it is best to remove them from the index?
- A few of these quantity pages do have intenral links (a few procent of them) because of a sale campaign. So there will be some (not much) internal links pointing to non-canonical pages. Would that be a problem?
Thanks a lot in advance for your help!
Best!
-
Hi Joseph, thanks for your reply, really helpful! 301 is not really an option, because these quantity URL's are sometimes used for promotions and need to be reachable. Therefore I guess canonicals are the second best solution.
We will implement the solution I described and see what will happen. Thanks again!
-
Hello there,
To answer your questions,
1. Google will still crawl your pages even if it's not from the sitemap unless you specify disallow from your robots.txt
2. If they are similar content with the main difference at "quantities" couldn't you consolidate them into one single page that lists all the quantities your company sell in and then 301 redirect the other pages to the consolidated one?
3. It doesn't seem like going to be causing any problem nor hurting your SEO performance, but you could always change these link to the canonical link.
Hope this helps,
Joseph Yap
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
-
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Manage category pages and duplicate content issues
Hi everybody, I am now auditing this website www.disfracessimon.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
this website has some issues with canonicals and other things. But right now I have found something that I would like to know your opinion. When I was checking parts of the content in google to find duplicate content issues I found this: I google I searched: "Chaleco de streck decorado con botones" and found First result: "Hombre trovador" is the one I was checking -> Correct
The following results are category pages where the product is listed in. I was wondering if this could cause any problem related with duplicated content. Should I no index category pages or should I keep it?
The first result in google was the product page. And category pages I think are good for link juice transfer and to capture some searchs from Google. Any advice? Thank you0 -
Google is indexing the wrong page
Hello, I have a site I am optimizing and I cant seem to get a particular listing onto the first page due to the fact google is indexing the wrong page. I have the following scenario. I have a client with multiple locations. To target the locations I set them up with URLs like this /<cityname>-wedding-planner.</cityname> The home page / is optimized for their port saint lucie location. the page /palm-city-wedding-planner is optimized for the palm city location. the page /stuart-wedding-planner is optimized for the stuart location. Google picks up the first two and indexes them properly, BUT the stuart location page doesnt get picked up at all, instead google lists / which is not optimized at all for stuart. How do I "let google know" to index the stuart landing page for the "stuart wedding planner" term? MOZ also shows the / page as being indexed for the stuart wedding planner term as well but I assume this is just a result of what its finding when it performs its searches.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mediagiant0 -
Best practice for retiring old product pages
We’re a software company. Would someone be able to help me with a basic process for retiring old product pages and re-directing the SEO value to new pages. We are retiring some old products to focus on new products. The new software has much similar functionality to the old software, but has more features. How can we ensure that the new pages get the best start in life? Also, what is the best way of doing this for users? Our plan currently is to: Leave the old pages up initially with a message to the user that the old software has been retired. There will also be a message explaining that the user might be interested in one of our new products and a link to the new pages. When traffic to these pages reduces, then we will delete these pages and re-direct them to the homepage. Has anyone got any recommendations for how we could approach this differently? One idea that I’m considering is to immediately re-direct the old product pages to the new pages. I was wondering if we could then provide a message to the user explaining that the old product has been retired but that the new improved product is available. I’d also be interested in pointing the re-directs to the new product pages that are most relevant rather than the homepage, so that they get the value of the old links. I’ve found in the past that old retirement pages for products can outrank the new pages as until you 301 them then all the links and authority flow to these pages. Any help would be very much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
PR Dilution and Number of Pages Indexed
Hi Mozzers, My client is really pushing for me to get thousands, if not millions of pages indexed through the use of long-tail keywords. I know that I can probably get quite a few of them into Google, but will this dilute the PR on my site? These pages would be worthwhile in that if anyone actually visits them, there is a solid chance they will convert to a lead do to the nature of the long-tail keywords. My suggestion is to run all the keywords for these thousands of pages through adwords to check the number of queries and only create pages for the ones which actually receive searches. What do you guys think? I know that the content needs to have value and can't be scraped/low-quality and pulling these pages out of my butt won't end well, but I need solid evidence to make a case either for or against it to my clients.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
How to Fix Duplicate Page Content?
Our latest SEOmoz crawl reports 1138 instances of "duplicate page content." I have long been aware that our duplicate page content is likely a major reason Google has de-valued our Web store. Our duplicate page content is the result of the following: 1. We sell audio books and use the publisher's description (narrative) of the title. Google is likely recognizing the publisher as the owner / author of the description and our description as duplicate content. 2. Many audio book titles are published in more than one format (abridged, unabridged CD, and/or unabridged MP3) by the same publisher so the basic description on our site would be the same at our Web store for each format = more duplicate content at our Web store. Here's are two examples (one abridged, one unabridged) of one title at our Web store. Kill Shot - abridged Kill Shot - unabridged How much would the body content of one of the above pages have to change so that a SEOmoz crawl does NOT say the content is duplicate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen0 -
De Index Section of Page?
Hey all! We're having a couple of issues with a certain section of our page that we don't want to index. Basically, our cross sells change really quickly, and big G is ranking them and linking to them even when they've long gone. Is it possible to put some kind of no index tag for a specific section of the page? See below 🙂 http://www.freestylextreme.com/uk/Home/Brands/DC-Shoe-Co-/Mens-DC-Shoe-Co-Hoodies-and-Sweaters/DC-Black-Rob-Dyrdek-Official-Sweater.aspx Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elbeno0 -
How do I index these parameter generated pages?
Hey guys, I've got an issue with a site I'm working on. A big chunk of the content (roughly 500 pages) is delivered using parameters on a dynamically generated page. For example: www.domain.com/specs/product?=example - where "example' is the product name Currently there is no way to get to these pages unless you enter the product name into the search box and access it from there. Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless we find some other way to link to these pages they're basically invisible to search engines, right? What I'm struggling with is a method to get them indexed without doing something like creating a directory map type page of all of the links on it, which I guess wouldn't be a terrible idea as long as it was done well. I've not encountered a situation like this before. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0