Removing duplicated content using only the NOINDEX in large scale (80% of the website).
-
Hi everyone,
I am taking care of the large "news" website (500k pages), which got massive hit from Panda because of the duplicated content (70% was syndicated content). I recommended that all syndicated content should be removed and the website should focus on original, high quallity content.
However, this was implemented only partially. All syndicated content is set to NOINDEX (they thing that it is good for user to see standard news + original HQ content). Of course it didn't help at all. No change after months. If I would be Google, I would definitely penalize website that has 80% of the content set to NOINDEX a it is duplicated. I would consider this site "cheating" and not worthy for the user.
What do you think about this "theory"? What would you do?
Thank you for your help!
-
-
it has been almost a year now from the massive hit. after that, there were also some smaller hits
-
we are putting effort into improvements. that is quite frustrating for me, because I believe that our effort is demolished by old duplicated content (that creates 80% of the website :-))
Yeah, we will need to take care about the link-mess...
Thank you! -
-
Yeah, this strategy will be definitely part of the guidelines for the editors.
One last question: do you know some good resources I can use as an inspiration?
Thank you so much..
-
We deleted thousands of pages every few months.
Before deleting anything we identified valuable pages that continued to receive traffic from other websites or from search. These were often updated and kept on the site. Everything else was 301 redirected to the "news homepage" of the site. This was not a news site, it was a very active news section on an industry portal site.
You have set 410 for those pages and remove all internal links to them and google was ok with that?
Our goal was to avoid internal links to pages that were going to be deleted. Our internal "story recommendation" widgets would stop showing links to pages after a certain length of time. Our periodic purges were done after that length of time.
We never used hard coded links in stories to pages that were subject to being abandoned. Instead we simply linked to category pages where something relevant would always be found.
Develop a strategy for internal linking that will reduce site maintenance and focus all internal links to pages that are permanently maintained.
-
Yaikes! Will you guys still pay for it if it's removed? If so, then combining below comments with my thoughts - I'd delete it, since it's old and not time relevant.
-
Yeah, paying ... we actually pay for this content (earlier management decisions :-))
-
EGOL your insights are very appreciated :-)!
I agree with you. Makes total sense.
So you didn't experience any problems removing outdated content (or "content with no traffic value") from your website? You have set 410 for those pages and remove all internal links to them and google was ok with that?
Redirecting useless content - you mean set 301 to the most relevant page that is bringing traffic?
Thank you sir
-
But I still miss the point of paying for the content that is not accessible from SE
- "paying"?
Is my understanding right, that if I would set canonical for these duplicates, Google has no reason to show this pages in the SERP?
- correct
-
HI Dimitrii,
thank you very much for your opinion. The idea of canonical links is very interesting. We may try that in the "first" phase. But I still miss the point of paying for the content that is not accessible from SE.
Is my understanding right, that if I would set canonical for these duplicates, Google has no reason to show this pages in the SERP?
-
Just seeing the other responses. Agree with what EGOL mentions. A content audit would be even better to see if there was any value at all on those pages (GA traffic, links, etc). Odds are though that there was not any and you already killed all of it with the noindex tag in place.
-
Couple of things here.
-
If a second Panda update has not occurred since the changes that were made then you may not get credit for the noindexed content. I don't think this is "cheating" as with the noindex, it just told Google to take 350K of its pages out of the index. The noindex is one of the best ways to get your content out of Google's index.
-
If you have not spent time improving the non-syndicated content then you are missing the more important part and that is to improve the quality of the content that you have.
A side point to consider here, is your crawl budget. I am assuming that the site still internally links to these 350K pages and so users and bots will go to them and have to process etc. This is mostly a waste of time. As all of these pages are out of Google's index thanks to the noindex tag, why not take out all internal links to those pages (i.e. from sitemaps, paginated index pages, menus, internal content) so that you can have the user and Google focus on the quality content that is left over. I would then also 404/410 all those low quality pages as they are now out of Google's index and not linked internally. Why maintain the content?
-
-
Good point! News gotta be new
-
If there are 500,000 pages of "news" then a lot of that content is "history" instead of "news". Visitors are probably not consuming it. People are probably not searching for it. And actively visited pages on the site are probably not linking to it.
So, I would use analytics to determine if these "history" pages are being viewed, are pulling in much traffic, have very many links, and I would delete and redirect them if they are not important to the site any longer. This decision is best made at the page level.
For "unique content" pages that appear only on my site, I would assess them at regular intervals to determine which ones are pulling in traffic and which ones are not. Some sites place news in folders according to their publication dates and that facilitates inspecting old content for its continued value. These pages can then be abandoned and redirected once their content is stale and not being consumed. Again, this can best be done at the page level.
I used to manage a news section and every few months we would assess, delete and redirect, to keep the weight of the site as low as possible for maximum competitiveness.
-
Hi there.
NOINDEX !== no crawling. and surely it doesn't equal NOFOLLOW. what you probably should be looking at is canonical links.
My understanding is (and i can be completely wrong) that when you get hit by Panda for duplicate content and then try to recover, Google checks your website for the same duplicate content - it's still crawlable, all the links are still "followable", it's still scraped content, you aren't telling crawlers that you took it from somewhere else (by canonicalizing), it's just not displayed in SERPs. And yes, 80% of content being noindex probably doesn't help either.
So, I think that what you need to do is either remove that duplicate content whatsoever, or use canonical links to originals or (bad idea, but would work) block all those links in robots.txt (at least this way those pages will become uncrawlable whatsoever). All this still is unreputable techniques though, kinda like polishing the dirt.
Hope this makes sense.
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 redirect 301 from high authority sites to own website?
How to redirect 301 from high authority sites to own website? If anyone know can tell me, such gigs are selling on the Fiverr.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jefjaa0 -
Do content copycats (plagiarism) hurt original website rankings?
Hi all, Found some websites stolen our content and using the same sentences in their website pages. Does this content hurt our website rankings? Their DA is low, still we are worried about the damage about this plagiarism. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Duplicate content site not penalized
Was reviewing a site, www.adspecialtyproductscatalog.com, and noted that even though there are over 50,000 total issues found by automated crawls, including 3000 pages with duplicate titles and 6,000 with duplicate content this site still ranks high for primary keywords. The same essay's worth of content is pasted at the bottom of every single page. What gives, Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KenSchaefer0 -
Advice needed! How to clear a website of a Wordpress Spam Link Injection Google penalty?
Hi Guys, I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection. The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected. All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built. That was the easy part 🙂 The problems comes when I look on Webmaster. Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site. These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links. I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings. Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively. I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine. Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty? Thanks, Duncan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Wordpress Category Archives - Index - but will this cause duplication?
Okay something I am struggling with Using YOAST - but have a recipe blog - However the category archives have /are being optimized and indexed as I am adding custom content to them , then listing the recipes below. My question is if I am indexing the Category Archives and using these to add custom content above - then allows the recipe excerpts from the category to be listed underneath - will these recipe excerpts be picked up as duplicate content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kelly33300 -
What tools do you use to find scraped content?
This hasn’t been an issue for our company so far, but I like to be proactive. What tools do you use to find sites that may have scraped your content? Looking forward to your suggestions. Vic
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VicMarcusNWI0 -
New online store and use black hat to bring lots of sales
I have one online store and all the seo rules are follow to increase ranking and sales. Buying a new url a launching a new store ( to sale exactly the same products) is fast, easy and cheap. How about using black hat to this new store? I think I have nothing to loose. Is there something I should know before moving ahead? Launching a new store is very cheap and black hat can be done by one of those overseas company at low prices First thing, this new store should not link to my actual store I guess. Any advice? Thank you, BigBlaze
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Competitor using "unatural inbound links" not penalized??!
Since Google's latest updates, I think it would be safe to say that building links is harder. But i also read that Google applies their latest guidelines retro-actively. In other words, if you have built your ilnking profile on a lot of unnatural links, with spammy anchor text, you will get noticed and penalized. In the past, I used to use SEO friendly directories and "suggest URL's" to build back links, with keyword/phrase anchor text. But I thought that this technique was frowned upon by Google these days. So, what is safe to do? Why is Google not penalizing the competitor? And bottom line what is considered to be "unnatural link building" ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20101