URL Parameter Setting Recommendation - Webmaster Tools, Breadcrumbs & 404s
-
Hi All,
We use a parameter called "breadCrumb" to drive the breadcrumbs on our ecommerce product pages that are categorized in multiple places. For example, our "Blue Widget" product may have the following URLs:
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=BrandTree_
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=CategoryTree1_
http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=CategoryTree2_We use a canonical tag pointing back to the base product URL. The parameter only changes the breadcrumbs. Which of the following, if any, settings would you recommend for such a parameter in GWT:
Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? Options: Yes/No
How does this parameter affect page content? Options: Narrows/Specifies/OtherCurrently, google decided to automatically assign the parameter as "Yes/Other/Let Googlebot Decide" without notifying us. We noticed a drop in rankings around the suspected time of the assignment.
Lastly, we have a consistent flow of products that are discontinued that we 404. As a result of the breadcrumb parameter, our 404s increase significantly (one for each path). Would 800 404 crawl errors out of 18k products cause a penalty on a young site? We got an "Increase in '404' pages' email from GWT, shortly after our rankings seemed to drop.
Thank you for any advice or suggestions! Doug
-
Thanks for the response Anthony! It's greatly appreciated.
> splitting the link equity between these duplicate pages
This is our main fear given that every listing page link uses this parameter.We thought about using the "No" option because we agree that the content doesn't really change, but google says this next to the option: "If many URLs differ only in this parameter, Googlebot will crawl one representative URL.". It may have the same result? Not sure.
Maybe the following would force the issue?
Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? >> Yes
How does this parameter affect page content? >> Other
Which URLs with this parameter should Googlebot crawl? >> Every URLAlso, we could try to delete their auto assignment of the parameter and hope for a different result. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback.
-
I would tell GWT that this parameter Does Not change the content on the page. A single breadcrumb path does not significantly change the content on a page.
Consider a site that sells shoes and may be using parameters like fakeshoestore.com/mens?color=black. In this case, the color parameter is creating a completely new set of results, Narrowing the entire men's shoe category down to black shoes. That is a new page and you want it treated as such. (No canonical, Yes->Narrows).
With Google thinking http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget and http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=BrandTree_ have different content on them, they may be splitting the link equity between these duplicate pages, allowing neither of them to rank well. Even though you have the canonical tag in place (good job) it is more of a hint to Google as opposed to an absolute directive.
The 404 pages isn't a huge concern. As with all 404's redirect the ones that receive organic traffic or have external links pointing at them.
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
-
Trailing Slashes on URLs
Hi we currently have a site on Wordpress which has two version of each URL trailing slash on URLs and one without it. Example: www.domain.com/page (preferred version - based on link data) www.domain.com/page**/** The non-slash version of the URL has most of the external links pointing to them, so we are going to pick that as the preferred version. However, currently, each version of every URL has rel canonical tag pointing to the non-preferred version. E.g. www.domain.com/page the rel canonical tag is: www.domain.com/page/ What would be the best way to clean up this setup? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Breadcrumbs not displaying on Google
Hello, We have set breadcrumbs on some of our pages (example: https://www.globecar.com/en/car-rental/locations/canada/qc/montreal/airport-yul) for testing purposes and for some reasons they are still not showing up on Google: http://screencast.com/t/BSHQqkP69r6F Yet when I test the page with Google Structured Data Testing tool all is good: http://screencast.com/t/Fzlz3zae Any ideas? Thanks, Karim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GlobeCar0 -
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
Are Incorrectly Set Up URL Rewrites a Possible Cause of Panda
On a .NET site, there was a url rewrite done about 2 years ago. From a visitor's perspective, it seems to be fine as the urls look clean. But, Webmaster tools reports 500 errors from time to time showing /modules/categories... and /modules/products.... which are templates and how the original urls were structured. While the developer made it look clean, I am concerned that he could have set it up incorrectly. He acknowledged that IIS 7 on a Windows server allows url rewrites to be set up, but the site was done in another way that forces the urls to change to their product name. So, he has believed it to be okay. However, the site dropped significantly in its ranking in July 2013 which appears to be a Panda penalty. In trying to figure out if this could be a factor in why the site has suffered, I would like to know other webmasters opinions. We have already killed many pages, removed 2/3 of the index that Google had, and are trying to understand what else it could be. Also, in doing a header check, I see that it shows the /modules/products... page return a 301 status. I assume that this is okay, but wanted to see what others had to say about this. When I look at the source code of a product page, I see a reference to the /modules/products... I'm not sure if any of this pertains, but wanted to mention in case you have insight. I hope to get good feedback and direction from SEOs and technical folks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Webmaster Tools (Urgent)
So yesterday google webmaster tools has over 5,000 links linking to my site. I get in this morniing and now i have 16 links linking to my site and no rankings minus brand terms. I do not believe that I have been penalized but I might have been. After digging further into this it seems that my www.domain.com and domain.com are separated and webmaster tools is tracking www.domain.com and majority of links are to domain.com. Is this possible or am I wishing to see something that is not there. Any help and recommendations would be absolutely appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asher0 -
Do 410 show in the 404 not found section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Question: Do 410 show in the 404 not found section in Google Webmaster Tools? Specific situation: We got rid of an entire subdomain except for a few pages that we 301'd to relevant content on our main domain. The rest return a 404 not found. These show up in our google webmaster tools as crawl errors. I was wondering since 410 is a content gone error and we intentionally want this content gone, if we switch it to 410, does Google still report it as a 404 error? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
How to Resolve Duplication of HTTPS & HTPP URLs?
Right now, I am working on eCommerce website. [Lamps Lighting and More] I can find out both URLs in website as follow. HTTP Version: http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/ HTTPS Version: https://www.lampslightingandmore.com/ I have check one of my competitor who has implemented following canonical on both pages. Please, view source code for both URLs. http://www.wayfair.com ** https://www.wayfair.com** Then, I checked similar thing in SEOmoz website. 🙂 Why should I not check in SEOmoz because, They are providing best SEO information so may be using best practice to deal with HTTPS & HTTP. LOL I tried to load following URL so it redirect to home page. https://www.seomoz.org is redirecting to http://www.seomoz.org But, following URL is not redirecting any where as well as not set canonical over there. https://www.seomoz.org/users/settings I can find out following code on http://www.seomoz.org/robots.txt **User-agent: *** ** Disallow: /api/user?*** So, I am quite confuse to solve issue. Which one is best 301 redirect or canonical tag? If any live example to see so that's good for me and make me more confident.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Url with hypen or.co?
Given a choice, for your #1 keyword, would you pick a .com with one or two hypens? (chicago-real-estate.com) or a .co with the full name as the url (chicagorealestate.co)? Is there an accepted best practice regarding hypenated urls and/or decent results regarding the effectiveness of the.co? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joechicago0