CMS dynamicly created pages indexed?
-
Hey Moz'erz,
Looking at the indexed pages of my clients eCommerce website I noticed that dynamically created pages are being indexed.
For example this page does not "exist" but is created by a drop down filter menu that sorts by product tag:
/collections/tools/TAG
I can only conclude that this page got indexed either through a backlink or once upon a time there was an internal link pointing to this URL and got indexed (currently there is not). Are either of these cases possibilities?
In either case before considering removal or any action I would of-course reference analytics to check for conversions, traffic and any backlinks for those "pages".
I believe at the end of the day is recommend a drop down filer that doesn't create new pages as the best solution.
Thoughts, comments and experience is greatly welcomed
-
Hey Dylan
Either of those are possibilities for Google finding and indexing a page like that. There could be many ways that happened - I've seen them spider "links" in a drop down depending on how it's implemented.
One thing you can do to check how, is looked at the text-only cache of the page (type cache:www.domain.com/page-name in your browser and click text only) - and look to see if the drop down items actually appear and clickable links. You can also try crawling the site with Screaming Frog and set the user-agent to GoogleBot and see if they got picked up.
If the filter is just for example re-sorting the list of items in a category, there is probably not a need to have this crawled or indexed, because it's just the same content in a different order.
If you do want to remove them from the index, you will want to add a meta noindex tag to the HTML, wait for them to drop out of the index, and then block crawling with robots.txt or nofollow the links that might be generated.
Hope that helps!
EDIT - I'd also check to be sure they are not showing up in your XML sitemap.
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
-
Dead end pages are really an issue?
Hi all, We have many pages which are help guides to our features. These pages do not have anymore outgoing links (internal / external). We haven't linked as these are already 4th level pages and specific about particular topic. So these are technically dead end pages. Do these pages really hurt us? We need to link to some other pages? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Multiple Similar Product Variations - Page layout, Title and SEO best practice??
Im doing some research into SEO for our new web design. I sell designer eyewear prescription and sunglasses. Lets take a Ray Ban Wayfarer sunglass it comes in 30 colours and 3 sizes for each model. Up till now i was of the impression that for best practice SEO i would need to have each individual variation as its own page, this would also help with things like google shopping too. So for example heres 1 colour product in 3 sizes of 30 colour variations for this particular model. Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140
Web Design | | Craigboi1987
Colour: Black 901
Sizes: 47, 50, 54 Currently my urls looks like this with a new page and the size changing on the end for each variation. Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140 - Black 901 - 47 URL: www.mywebsite.com/ray-ban-wayfarer-rb2140.html?colour=Black+901&size=47 Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140 - Black 901 - 50 URL: www.mywebsite.com/ray-ban-wayfarer-rb2140.html?colour=Black+901&size=50 Ray Ban Wayfarer RB2140 - Black 901 - 54 URL: www.mywebsite.com/ray-ban-wayfarer-rb2140.html?colour=Black+901&size=54 This is very time consuming and I'm not sure if its adding any benefit to my SEO in fact scared its actually a) slowing my site down (content heavy)
b) looking like duplicate content I am thinking about moving towards a page more like this were it would be just be a model with variations. (not effecting the title/getting a new page per variation) http://demoleotheme.com/vigoss/index.php/atomic-endurance-running-tee-crew-neck.html I am not sure of the pros and cons of doing it this way over the way I'm doing it currently all i know is my site is ranking horribly. Lastly I'm currently running a magento V1.9 store which is renowned for duplicate content slow site speeds etc so have been told moving to woo commerce would benefit me for both site performance and seo but I'm skeptical as currently with this structure of a each SKU being a new page il be up to 8000+ products and multiple product variations that it can handle my needs, anyone with any experience on woo commerce platform? (this might be a operate question apologise) This is absolutely frying my brain so any advice appreciated. Im prepared to put every dying second into just need some solid advice in which direction to go!0 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
Too Many Links on One Page - What to Do?!
Hello Geniuses, Prodigies, and Experts of the Field, My website pages for www.1099pro.com have too many links on one page, something like 150-175, and I understand that each page should ideally be under 100. Most of these links, approx 105, come from dropdown navigation options in the header toolbar or the footer links. It is my take that these links make our site easier to navigate but I'm sure that they are hurting my pagerank / SERPs. Is there a best way to handle a situation like this? I'd really prefer not to alter the header/footer layout of the entire site by removing 50-75 navigational links. The only other idea I have is below but I have no idea if it would work. For any link that I do not care to pass pagerank, institute a "nofollow" parameter. This would be my favorite option if it is viable.
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
40 percent redundant content on landing pages with 60 percent unique information.
I have searched schema.org for tags to use for our redudant content on 25 unique local landing pages. The redundant content references our services and abilities on each page. Could anyone tell me how to retain this content and direct the search engines to disregard this portion of the landing page. We are a WordPress site -- if there is a plugin - I would love to know which one might work, although I have not been able to find one that will protect us from duplicate content issues. Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | seant1190 -
How keywords per page to keep from being "spammy"?
Hi all, I am currently doing a marketing internship for a B2B company that does all sorts of out-sourced recruiting work. I have some experience with SEO, but not completely confident. My first question is, I know Google sees websites that load up on keywords as "spammy", so what is the appropriate number of keywords per page? Currently, I was thinking about this setup: 1 keyword for the URL 1 keyword per alt tag (1 per page, at most) 2 keywords per each title tag (approximately 4 pages that I am going to follow internally, not following the "about us" page). After that, I was thinking of adding 2-3 more keywords in each meta description and 2-3 in the body copy. That would equate to 6-8 keywords on each page, is this too many and should keywords be repeated (on the same page or across multiple pages)? Since this website is brand new (zero links), would it make sense to nofollow all of the internal links so that they homepage can gain ranking as quickly as possible within Google?
Web Design | | wlw20090 -
Duplicate Page Title
Virtually all of my pages are coming up with a "Duplicate Page Title" error even though the page title are different. I assume this is down to the end of the page title having the company name. Is this the reason and is it a problem to have a page title like below... "Page title description - Company Name"
Web Design | | petewinter0 -
Does listing my customer's address, phone number, and a contact form on "every page" count as duplicate content that they'd be penalized for?
I work with small local businesses (like Tree Farms, Feed Stores, Counselors, etc) doing web design, seo, etc. I encourage them to have their contact information visible at all times on their websites. I'm also delving into the world of contact forms. I want to have this info on every page - is this detrimental? Here's an example: http://www.trinityescape.net/marriage-couples-counselors-therapy-clermont-florida/ Thank you!
Web Design | | mikjgens1