What is best practice for "Sorting" URLs to prevent indexing and for best link juice ?
-
We are now introducing 5 links in all our category pages for different sorting options of category listings.
The site has about 100.000 pages and with this change the number of URLs may go up to over 350.000 pages.
Until now google is indexing well our site but I would like to prevent the "sorting URLS" leading to less complete crawling of our core pages, especially since we are planning further huge expansion of pages soon.Apart from blocking the paramter in the search console (which did not really work well for me in the past to prevent indexing) what do you suggest to minimize indexing of these URLs also taking into consideration link juice optimization?
On a technical level the sorting is implemented in a way that the whole page is reloaded, for which may be better options as well.
-
With canonicals, I would not worry about the incoming pages. If the new content is useful and relevant, plus linked to internally, they should do fine in terms of indexation. Use the canonical for now, and once you launch the new pages, well a month after launch, if there are key pages not getting indexed, then you can reassess. The canonical is the right thing to do in this case.
As for link equity, you are right, that is a simplistic view of it. It is actually much more intricate than that, but that's a good basic understanding. However, the canonical is not going to hurt your internal link equity. Those links to the different sorting are navigational in nature and the structure will be repeated throughout the site. Google's algo is good at determining internal, editorial links versus those that are navigational in nature. The navigational links don't impact the strength nearly as much as an editorial link.
My personal belief is that you are worrying about something that isn't going to make an impact on your organic traffic. Ensure the correct canonicals are in place and launch the new content. If that new content has the same issue with sorting, use canonicals there as well and let Google figure it out. "They" have gotten pretty good at identifying what to keep and what not.
If you don't want the sorting pages in there at all, you'll need to do one of the following:
- Noindex, disallow in robots.txt - Rhea Drysdale showed me a few years back that you can do a disallow and noindex in robots. If you do both, Google gets the command to not only noindex the URLs, but also cannot crawl the content.
- Noindex, nofollow using meta robots - This would stop all link equity flow from these pages. If you want to attempt to stop flow to these pages, you'll need to nofollow any links to them. The pages can still be crawled however.
- Noindex, follow - Same as above but internal link equity would still flow. Again, if you want to attempt to cut off link equity to these sorting pages, any links to them would need to be nofollowed.
- Disallow in robots - This would stop them from crawling the content, but the URLs could technically still be indexed.
Personally, I believe trying to manage link equity using nofollow is a waste of time. You more than likely have other things that could be making larger impacts. The choice is yours however and I always recommend testing anything to see if it makes an impact.
-
Kate. The domain has 100.000 pages and will scale to over 1 million unique pages during the next couple of months. I do not want the Sorting URLs have any negative effect on the new indexing of the new 900.000 unique pages in the next months.
Regarding link equity. My simplified understanding of link equity is that if a page has 10 links then each link carries 10% of the total link juice of the page. If now 5 of the 10 links do link to a canonical version of the same page (=sorting URLs), I may be losing out on 50% of the potential link juice the page carries. This is my concern. Therefore my doubt is if I should rather try to hide these sorting URLs from google (same as was also recommended by Rand for facetted navigation pages that one does not consider important for being indexed).
-
Is your issue with crawling or indexing? Those are two separate issues. Why don't you want Google having the canonicals in the index? If you can give me some more insight, I can try to recommend the best option.
And I'm not following your last question. Can you try to ask it another way?
-
Hi Kate, thanks lot. Yes canonical is something we should definetly do and we have implemented.
Still I had the experience in the past that google also indexed lots of canonicalized URLs with near identical content. Any additional step I could do to minimize indexing of these URLs further?
Wouldn't then the basically "self referencing" URLS of sorting links (going to canonicalized versions of the same page) be lost for link equity?
-
This one would need a canonical. For one category page with 5 different sort options, you'd need one canonical URL (one without any sorting or the default sorting) and point all others to that URL using a canonical tag.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
Would that work for your setup? If I understand your situation correctly, this should work. It consolidates link equity and allows Google to choose what needs to be indexed and served.
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
-
What Are Internal Linking Best Practices For Blogs?
We have a blog for our e-commerce site. We are posting about 4-5 blog posts a month, most of them 1500+ words. Within the content, we have around 10-20 links pointing out to other blog posts or products/categories on our site. Except for the products/categories, the links use non-optimized generic anchor text (i.e guide, sizing tips, planning resource). Are there any issues or problems as far as SEO with this practice? Thank You
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kekepeche0 -
Five best practice for SEO
Hello Everyone, I am new to SEO and need some help. I have 6 sites and I need to know what are the top 5 strategies for Off page seo. I mean the most important ones. Thanks Abie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | signsny0 -
Removing Parameterized URLs from Google Index
We have duplicate eCommerce websites, and we are in the process of implementing cross-domain canonicals. (We can't 301 - both sites are major brands). So far, this is working well - rankings are improving dramatically in most cases. However, what we are seeing in some cases is that Google has indexed a parameterized page for the site being canonicaled (this is the site that is getting the canonical tag - the "from" page). When this happens, both sites are being ranked, and the parameterized page appears to be blocking the canonical. The question is, how do I remove canonicaled pages from Google's index? If Google doesn't crawl the page in question, it never sees the canonical tag, and we still have duplicate content. Example: A. www.domain2.com/productname.cfm%3FclickSource%3DXSELL_PR is ranked at #35, and B. www.domain1.com/productname.cfm is ranked at #12. (yes, I know that upper case is bad. We fixed that too.) Page A has the canonical tag, but page B's rank didn't improve. I know that there are no guarantees that it will improve, but I am seeing a pattern. Page A appears to be preventing Google from passing link juice via canonical. If Google doesn't crawl Page A, it can't see the rel=canonical tag. We likely have thousands of pages like this. Any ideas? Does it make sense to block the "clicksource" parameter in GWT? That kind of scares me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Static looking URL - Best practices?
We are about to modify the structure of our dynamic URLs and I wonder what the latest and greatest is in terms of SEO-friendly dynamic URLs. Our thinking so far is to do something like: www.domain.com/products/state/city/first-search-parameter+second-parameter+third-parameter+any-additional-keywords that is, using + to separate search parameters and hyphens to separate words An example might be www.homes.com/listings/ca/san-francisco/single-family-home+3-bedrooms+2-bathrooms+swimming-pool-garden-wood-exterior I'm not an SEO expert so any help would be appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lln220 -
Best option for Affiliate links on your website?
Hello! I have a website which is completely affiliate based. What is the best option for the links on-page? Examples would be: affiliate.website.com/12901730?2=3532523=user12342901730?2=3532523=user?Whittie www.website.com/affiliate=user?Whittie=load-of-tracking=date=blah=blaH?blah And So on... Which look ugly as sin when you hover over the Anchor Text. Ideally I would like a 301 redirect to mysite.com/goto/affiliatename, which would then have a rel nofollow. This way I could also track the exit pages via Analytics too guess, which I've not currently got set up and i'm desperate for it to be done. Does this method effect anything on search engines though? I've seen mixed report, but going back to 2011 which is too long ago in the SEO world. Another option is to use the likes of "Bit.ly" or use another domain and host 301s on there? The new bit.ly integration from moz might come in handy here. Please advise on the subject, I really appreciate any help on this, as i'm at a brick wall. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
Could a HTML <select>with large numbers of <option value="<url>">'s affect my organic rankings</option></select>
Hi there, I'm currently redesigning my website, and one particular pages lists hotels in New York. Some functionality I'm thinking of adding in is to let the user find hotels close to specific concert venues in New York. My current thinking is to provide the following select element on the page - selecting any one of the options will automatically redirect to my page for that concert venue. The purpose of this isn't to affect the organic traffic - I'm simply introducing this as a tool to help customers find the right hotel, but I certainly don't want it to have an adverse effect on my organic traffic. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I must add that in certain cities, such as New York, there could be up to 450 different options in this select element. | <select onchange="location=options[selectedIndex].value;"> <option value="">Show convenient hotels for:</option> <option value="http://url1..">1492 New York</option> <option value="http://url2..">Abrons Arts Center</option> <option value="http://url3..">Ace of Clubs New York</option> <option value="http://url4..">Affairs Afloat</option> <option value="http://url5..">Affirmation Arts New York</option> <option value="http://url6..">Al Hirschfeld Theatre</option> <option value="http://url7..">Alice Tully Hall</option> .. .. ..</select> Many thanks Mike |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk260 -
Pagination: rel="next" rel="prev" in ?
With Google releasing that instructional on proper pagination I finally hunkered down and put in a site change request. I wanted the rel="next" and rel="prev" implemented… and it took two weeks for the guy to get it done. Brutal and painful. When I looked at the source it turned out he put it in the body above the pagination links… which is not what I wanted. I wanted them in the . Before I respond to get it properly implemented I want a few opinions - is it okay to have the rel="next" in the body? Or is it pretty much mandatory to put it in the head? (Normally, if I had full control over this site, I would just do it myself in 2 minutes… unfortunately I don't have that luxury with this site)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeTheBoss1 -
Noindex,follow is a waste of link juice?
On my wordpress shopping cart plugin, I have three pages /account, /checkout and /terms on which I have added “noindex,follow” attribute. But I think I may be wasting link juice on these pages as they are not to be indexed anyway, so is there any point giving them any link juice? I can add “noindex,nofollow” on to the page itself. However, the actual text/anchor link to these pages on the site header will remain “follow” as I have no means of amending that right now. So this presents the following two scenarios – No juice flows from homepage to these 3 pages (GOOD) – This would be perfect then, as the pages themselves have nofollow attribute. Juice flows from homepage to these pages (BAD) - This may mean that the juice flows from homepage anchor text links to these 3 pages BUT then STOPS there as they have “nofollow” attribute on that page. This will be a bigger problem and if this is the case and I cant stop the juice from flowing in, then ill rather let it flow out to other pages. Hope you understand my question, any input is very much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBuck1