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!
-
What cms are you using? I have a module that I developed that is free for Prestashop if you are using it. What it does is lets you give your search pages a static name. You have to specifically define terms, so it does not automatically make a landing page for each term. It also lets you do title's, meta descriptions, and keywords for the pages. The way the code works might prove a useful framework for adapting it to what ever platform you are using. The git is at https://github.com/Prestashop-Modules/searchterm there is an explanation of how it works at http://blog.dh42.com/search-pages-landing-pages/
-
My only point to that is that you will need a way to let people search on your site. Since you are taking the old search URLs and redirecting them, you will not be able to use them for people to search your site moving forward.
You would have to create a new search option using a new folder/url for this so that the old one could be 301ed to the static pages.
-
Thank you so much for your helpful answer. I am truly hoping what you described is possible using this CMS, which often makes it impossible to implement complicated customizations.
I am a little confused by what you mean by "create a new /search/" section. Are you saying that all of my new static pages should also live in the /search/ folder? Then how would I de-index the existing low-value search results pages?
-
You have to do this in phases.
-
Find the high ranking pages in search results - figure out why they are ranking.
-
Build the new static pages with good quality content to replace them. Use the info from #1 to help
-
Create a new /search/ section - put that behind robots.txt etc.
-
Update navigation links, sitemaps, breadcrumbs etc to now point to the new static optimized pages.
-
301 redirect the old /search/ section to the new static pages
-
Activate the new search section, but be careful about linking to it etc.
Done.
What is probably happening is that you have links to the site search sections from all over your site. You are telling Google that this is the most important part of your site. Google then says "OK" and pays attention to them. Using the steps above you redirect Googles attention, pass along the link/rank equity and prevent the new search section from being found.
Good luck!
-
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
-
How to get product info into Google Search Result box
Hi, in the last couple of weeks I get more and more search results with a product and prices of retailers below (see sample attached). Are there Schema parameters one could use to have a bigger chance to appear there? Thanks in advance Dieter Lang 0EYJtRJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco1 -
How to check if the page is indexable for SEs?
Hi, I'm building the extension for Chrome, which should show me the status of the indexability of the page I'm on. So, I need to know all the methods to check if the page has the potential to be crawled and indexed by a Search Engines. I've come up with a few methods: Check the URL in robots.txt file (if it's not disallowed) Check page metas (if there are not noindex meta) Check if page is the same for unregistered users (for those pages only available for registered users of the site) Are there any more methods to check if a particular page is indexable (or not closed for indexation) by Search Engines? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boostaman0 -
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 -
Why isn't my uneven link flow among index pages causing uneven search traffic?
I'm working with a site that has millions of pages. The link flow through index pages is atrocious, such that for the letter A (for example) the index page A/1.html has a page authority of 25 and the next pages drop until A/70.html (the last index page listing pages that start with A) has a page authority of just 1. However, the pages linked to from the low page authority index pages (that is, the pages whose second letter is at the end of the alphabet) get just as much traffic as the pages linked to from A/1.html (the pages whose second letter is A or B). The site gets a lot of traffic and has a lot of pages, so this is not just a statistical biip. The evidence is overwhelming that the pages from the low authority index pages are getting just as much traffic as those getting traffic from the high authority index pages. Why is this? Should I "fix" the bad link flow problem if traffic patterns indicate there's no problem? Is this hurting me in some other way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GilReich0 -
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 -
Guest Blogging Results - domain authority vs. page authority -
I have been guest blogging on various websites. The web pages that display my guest posts have zero page authority but a great domain authority of 60/100 or more. 2 links I developed are noted below as examples: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Small-Business-Consulting/8101/How-To-Hire-Extraordinary-Salespeople.html https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/4195/blog_posts/28772-4-essentials-for-rental-property-owners Am I wasting my time with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | superZj
Thank you!0 -
I have removed over 2000+ pages but Google still says i have 3000+ pages indexed
Good Afternoon, I run a office equipment website called top4office.co.uk. My predecessor decided that he would make an exact copy of the content on our existing site top4office.com and place it on the top4office.co.uk domain which included over 2k of thin pages. Since coming in i have hired a copywriter who has rewritten all the important content and I have removed over 2k pages of thin pages. I have set up 301's and blocked the thin pages using robots.txt and then used Google's removal tool to remove the pages from the index which was successfully done. But, although they were removed and can now longer be found in Google, when i use site:top4office.co.uk i still have over 3k of indexed pages (Originally i had 3700). Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and more importantly how i can fix it? Our ranking on this site is woeful in comparison to what it was in 2011. I have a deadline and was wondering how quickly, in your opinion, do you think all these changes will impact my SERPs rankings? Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
How to find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100