Internal search : rel=canonical vs noindex vs robots.txt
-
Hi everyone,
I have a website with a lot of internal search results pages indexed. I'm not asking if they should be indexed or not, I know they should not according to Google's guidelines. And they make a bunch of duplicated pages so I want to solve this problem.
The thing is, if I noindex them, the site is gonna lose a non-negligible chunk of traffic : nearly 13% according to google analytics !!!
I thought of blocking them in robots.txt. This solution would not keep them out of the index. But the pages appearing in GG SERPS would then look empty (no title, no description), thus their CTR would plummet and I would lose a bit of traffic too...
The last idea I had was to use a rel=canonical tag pointing to the original search page (that is empty, without results), but it would probably have the same effect as noindexing them, wouldn't it ? (never tried so I'm not sure of this)
Of course I did some research on the subject, but each of my finding recommanded one of the 3 methods only ! One even recommanded noindex+robots.txt block which is stupid because the noindex would then be useless...
Is there somebody who can tell me which option is the best to keep this traffic ?
Thanks a million
-
Yeah, normally I'd say to NOINDEX those user-generated search URLs, but since they're collecting traffic, I'd have to side with Alan - a canonical may be your best bet here. Technically, they aren't "true" duplicates, but you don't want the 1K pages in the index, you don't want to lose the traffic (which NOINDEX would do), and you don't want to kill those pages for users (which a 301 would do).
Only thing I'd add is that, if some of these pages are generating most of the traffic (e.g. 10 pages = 90% of the traffic for these internal searches), you might want to make those permanent pages, like categories in your site architecture, and then 301 the custom URLs to those permanent pages.
-
Huh not sure since I'm not a developer (and didn't work on that website dev) but I'd say all of the above^^. If useful, here are their url structure, there's two kind :
- /searchpage.htm?action=search&pagenumber=xx&query=product+otherterms
So I guess they are generated when a user makes a search
paginated (about 15 pages generally),
and I can approximately know how much they are duplicates, I can tell some are probably overlapping when there's a lot of variations for the product. There are just a few complete duplicates (when the product searched is the same with different added terms, doesn't happen a lot in this list).
- /searchpage-searchterm-addedterm-number.htm
Those I find surprising, I don't know if they are pages generated with a fixed url, or if they are rewritten (Haven't looked at the htaccess yet, but I will, god I have a headache just thinking about reading that thing lol)
There's about a thousand of them all (from GGanalytics, about half of each sort, and nearly all are indexed by Google), on a website with about 12 thou total in pages.
Maybe the traffic loss will be compensated by the removed competition between those search pages and the product pages (and the rel=canonical is surely way less brutal than a noindex for that matter), but without experience in these kind of situations it's hard to make a decision...
Really appreciate you guys taking the time to help !
-
Alan's absolutely right about how canonical works, but I just want to clarify something - what about these pages is duplicated? In other words, are these regular searches (like product searches) with duplicate URLs, are these paginated searches (with page 2, 3, etc. that appear thin), or are these user-generated searches spinning out into new search pages (not exact duplicates but overlapping)? The solutions can vary a bit with the problem, and internal search is tricky.
-
Just one more point, a canonical is just a hint to the search engines, it is not a directive, so if they think that the pages should not be merged, they will ignore them, so in that way, they may make the decision for you
-
Not a lot of real duplicates, they're more alike, and the most visited are unique, so I'll keep the most important ones and just toss a few duplicates.
Thanks a lot for your help, problem solved !
-
no not like a noindex. more like a merge.
will it make you rank for many keywords? not necessarly, as a page all about blue widgets is going to rank higher then a page has many different subjects including blue widgets.
A canonical is really for duplicate content, or very alike content.
So you have to decide what your page is, is it duplicate or alike content, or is it unique?
if the pages are unique then do nothing, let them rank. if yopu think they are alike, then use a canonical. if there are only a few, then i would not worry either way.
if you decide they are unique, they I would look at making the page title unique also, maybe even description too.
-
Thanks for your answer
Ok you're saying indeed it will act like a noindex over time.
So if one of the result page would have ranked for a particular query, it will not rank any more, like with a noindex => it will lose the 13% of traffic it generated...
Otherwise it would be too easy to make a page rank for the keywords used in a bunch of other pages that refer to it via rel=canonical... wouldn't it ?
I'm starting to think I can't do anything... Maybe just noindex a bunch of them that cause duplicates, and leave the rest in the index.
-
Rel=canonical is tge way to go, it will tell the search results that all credit for all diffrent urls go to the original search page. eventual onl;y the original search page will exist in the index.
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
-
No index tag robots.txt
Hi Mozzers, A client's website has a lot of internal directories defined as /node/*. I already added the rule 'Disallow: /node/*' to the robots.txt file to prevents bots from crawling these pages. However, the pages are already indexed and appear in the search results. In an article of Deepcrawl, they say you can simply add the rule 'Noindex: /node/*' to the robots.txt file, but other sources claim the only way is to add a noindex directive in the meta robots tag of every page. Can someone tell me which is the best way to prevent these pages from getting indexed? Small note: there are more than 100 pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Abnormally high internal link reported in Google Search Console not matching Moz reports
If I'm looking at our internal link count and structure on Google Search Console, some pages are listed as having over a thousand internal links within our site. I've read that having too many internal links on a page devalues that page's PageRank, because the value is divided amongst the pages it links out to. Likewise, I've heard having too many internal links is just bad in general for SEO. Is that true? The problem I'm facing is determining how Google is "discovering" these internal links. If I'm just looking at one single page reported with, say, 1,350 links and I'm just looking at the code, it may only have 80 or 90 actual links. Moz will confirm this, as well. So why would Google Search Console report different? Should I be concerned about this?
Technical SEO | | Closetstogo0 -
Can I Block https URLs using Host directive in robots.txt?
Hello Moz Community, Recently, I have found that Google bots has started crawling HTTPs urls of my website which is increasing the number of duplicate pages at our website. Instead of creating a separate robots.txt file for https version of my website, can I use Host directive in the robots.txt to suggest Google bots which is the original version of the website. Host: http://www.example.com I was wondering if this method will work and suggest Google bots that HTTPs URLs are the mirror of this website. Thanks for all of the great responses! Regards,
Technical SEO | | TJC.co.uk
Ramendra0 -
Explain me the SEO impact when a website has more internal link compared to less internal links
A website that I am working on has more than 200 internal links (Its because of the design and various kind of service that we offer). I want to know its SEO impact. I also want to know the SEO impact when a website has less internal links compared to more internal links
Technical SEO | | BoniSatani0 -
NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages: However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling. Any thoughts would be appreciated! DyWRP.png
Technical SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI0 -
Which is best of narrow by search URLs? Canonical or NOINDEX
I have set canonical to all narrow by search URLs. I think, it's not working well. You can get more idea by following URLs. http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?material_search=1328 http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?finish_search=146 These kind of page have canonical tag which is pointing to following one. http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps Because, it's actual page which I want to out rank. But, all narrow by search URLs have very different products compare to base URLs. So, How can we say it duplicate one? Which is best solution for it. Canonical or NOINDEX it by Robots?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)
Technical SEO | | raywatson0 -
Subdomain Robots.txt
If I have a subdomain (a blog) that is having tags and categories indexed when they should not be, because they are creating duplicate content. Can I block them using a robots.txt file? Can I/do I need to have a separate robots file for my subdomain? If so, how would I format it? Do I need to specify that it is a subdomain robots file, or will the search engines automatically pick this up? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnECF0