Is there a benefit to hiding words from Google on ecommerce sites?
-
I think we all know that ecommerce sites have a lot of repeating functional texts on them. Is there a benefit from hiding this text from Google's crawler? Take this page for example, http://storage3.static.itmages.com/i/16/0805/h_1470425505_1090542_224cc344d4.png
Some of the most dense words on the page are "Add to cart", "Add to Wishlist", "New", and "Sale". Is there any benefit to hiding those words from Google? The method of hiding I am talking about is not cloaking, but this, https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/gsa/docs/admin/70/gsa_doc_set/admin_crawl/preparing.html#1076243 using the google:off index tag. So the content will be there still, but it will not be indexed.
-
Hi Lesley,
I think Google would be pretty good at handling things like this on e-commerce sites, so I wouldn't worry about it (as long as those page elements are plain text and not using heading tags, for some reason).
Also, google:off/on tags are only used by Google Search Appliance, and are ignored by Google Bot. You will still have content within off/on tags indexed in normal Google search.
Cheers,
David
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 Mobile usability issues
Hi,
On-Page Optimization | | MProenca
I received a mail from Google to "Fix mobile usability issues found on http://miguel-proença.com/ ". I've changed to a responsive design and all site pages are now mobile-friendly. However, on webmaster tools the usability issues still appear. Does anybody have a solution to this ? Thanks0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
We rebuilt a site about a year ago on a new platform however Google is still indexing URL's from the old site that we have no control over. We had hoped that time would have 'cleaned' these out but they are still being flagged in HTML improvements in GWT. Is there anything we can do to effect these 'external' dropping out of the indexing given that they are still being picked up after a year.
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Duplicate content on events site
I have an event website and for every day the event occurs the event has a page. For example: The Oktoberfest in Germany the event takes 16 days. My site would have 16 (almost)identical pages about the Oktoberfest(same text, adres, photos, contact info). The only difference between the pages is the date mentioned on the page. I use rich snippets. How does google treat my pages and what is the best practice.
On-Page Optimization | | dragonflo0 -
Moving from Local to National Audience - Ecommerce Site
I have an e-commerce site that was optimized for local results. We’ve been receiving traffic from all over the nation so recently we've decided to optimize the site for a more national audience by removing the local business indicators. I have below a list of things that I’ve done, I’m contemplating doing and other various questions. One note I want to make is that we offer installation services – which we would still like to rank locally for. I have done the following: Remove [city] from all of the title tags (except for the installation pages) Removed NAP (name, address, ph#) from site wide footer – I’m not sure if I should have done this. Inserted NAP at the bottom of the body content of the installation pages Questions Right now my installation pages are located in a sub-folder (ex: www.mydomain.com/installation-services). Should I create a sub-domain for installations (ex: city.mydomain.com/installation-services)? My thoughts are that it would make that sub-domain all about our installation services while keeping our root domain focused on our products and not dilute it with installations. However, this sub-domain will have less juicy juice. What should I do with our G+ business page? In the back end of the business G+, there are boxes I can check for “my business has service areas where I visit my customers at their location” and “I serve customers at my business address.” If checked, will these make my site less likely to rank Nationally? We DO have a storefront and we DO visit people to do installations, so I would like these to be checked but not if it hurts my national rankings. There are local “7 pack” results for my main keywords and their installations. So, I would want my root domain to show up locally for “widgets in [city]” and my sub-domain to show up for “widget installation in [city]". Is it against Google’s TOS to create another G+ business page for the sub-domain? Is this even possible? Do I even need to do this or will Google know that I have a sub-domain all about installation and have my site show up in the local results? Is there anything in GWT that I need to make sure to have done? I put the geographic target to United States. Is there anything else? Of course, there is always the option of creating a new domain and optimize it for the installations. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | SWWebTeam0 -
How many times should a word appear in an article?
Hi My site is maily about growing fruit and vegetables and was badly hit after the September Panda update. Each page is about one type of fruit or vegetable and discusses how to grow that particular plant. Each page targets two keyword phrases, "growing abc" and "how to grow abc" so e.g. "Growing garlic: a guide on how to grow garlic" would be the page title and then the two phrases used a couple of times on each page. However the plant, in the above example "garlic" can appear upto 30 or 40 times per page, also the phrases "how to grow" and "growing" will appear on just about every page, would these facts be hurting my overall site rankings? Many Thanks Simon
On-Page Optimization | | spes1230 -
Best information organization for a new site?
I'm launching a new stain removal website, and wanted to know what would be considered the best way to organize the content? Since most articles will roughly involve "removing X from Y" or "how to remove Z," I can see two ways... 1. Organize articles by Stained Items, Stain Agents and perhaps Cleaning Detergents. 2. Spread the categories out more, to try and group stained items according to categories... E.g. Hard surfaces, delicates, fabrics, ceramics etc. Any thoughts on which of these two might be the best way to organize the site, or are there any better suggestions? Not sure what the main considerations are here... Either of these two seem equally user-friendly.
On-Page Optimization | | ZakGottlieb710 -
Streaming Google Places Reviews
Google no longer lets users pull an iframe of places reviews. I can't find a plugin for wordpress that will do this either. Any suggestions on how to show Google places reviews on your website? Or... should we blow it off and just go with yelp / City Search reviews?
On-Page Optimization | | John_Ellis0 -
Home Page is Not Ranking Anymore on this ecommerce site
Hi Everyone, I work regularly on this site www.cheapsnapframes.co.uk which is a cubecart based site and upto a few months ago the home page used to rank on poster frames we were on page 1 of google now we are on page 2 but it has dropped the home page and favours a category page. I have been looking at this to try and figure out why and I have today realised I had some external links on the home page pointing to the .com which the site used to run from but has been setup as a 301 redirect so I have changed these to internal links. I have used the on page tool and get an A but its been showing an A for a long time. Is there any other reason why we have lost out on this keyword term? Thank you in advance Tracy
On-Page Optimization | | dashesndots0