Blocking Dynamic Search Result Pages From Google
-
Hi Mozzerds,
I have a quick question that probably won't have just one solution.
Most of the pages that Moz crawled for duplicate content we're dynamic search result pages on my site. Could this be a simple fix of just blocking these pages from Google altogether? Or would Moz just crawl these pages as critical crawl errors instead of content errors?
Ultimately, I contemplated whether or not I wanted to rank for these pages but I don't think it's worth it considering I have multiple product pages that rank well. I think in my case, the best is probably to leave out these search pages since they have more of a negative impact on my site resulting in more content errors than I would like. So would blocking these pages from the Search Engines and Moz be a good idea?
Maybe a second opinion would help: what do you think I should do? Is there another way to go about this and would blocking these pages do anything to reduce the number of content errors on my site?
I appreciate any feedback! Thanks!
Andrew
-
Hi,
So the main issue with dynamic search results is that they won't have unique content, and will quite often duplicate other pages, as you've discovered. E.g. Products under £10, Products under £20, and Products under £30 would all include content from the first, and then the first and second categories.
The usual answer is to just noindex all of them, particularly if individual product pages are your focus and ranking well. Unless you specifically want to rank for 'x products under £10' then there's no issue with removing them from search results.
You have a couple of options for doing this - either by noindexing any dynamic search content via robots.txt, or Noindex,Follow, which still allows crawling, but won't display the results. In general, I'd say that Noindexing the dynamic search results with a wildcard is easiest and most effective.
If you did have something you wanted to rank - then it's be a case of setting a specific search result with some unique content describing that category etc.
Dan
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
-
Does Google understand misspellings in terms of what keywords I should optimize a page for
Hey there! This is sort of an oddball question. We do a lot of hospital websites. One client that we have spells "Orthopedics" as "Orthopaedics" which is another spelling. When I did initial keyword research the volume for Orthopedics as I expected is much higher. However when I do a test search for "Orthopaedics" it looks like I'm getting the same results and Google is highlighting in the content "orthopaedics" even though my search query was "orthopedics". What I'm wondering - is it the same thing to optimize for "orthopaedics" or is it a recommendation I should make to the client to change to "orthopedics" Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CentreTEK0 -
Google Search Console Site Property Questions
I have a few questions regarding Google Search Console. Google Search Console tells you to add all versions of your website https, http, www, and non-www. 1.) Do I than add ALL the information for ALL versions? Sitemaps, preferred site, etc.? 2.) If yes, when I add sitemaps to each version, do I add the sitemap url of the site version I'm on or my preferred version? - For instance when adding a sitemap to a non-www version of the site, do I use the non-www version of the sitemap? Or since I prefer a https://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml do I use it there? 3.) When adding my preferred site (www or non-www) do I use my preferred site on all site versions? (https, http, www, and non-www) Thanks in advance. Answers vary throughout Google!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
If there any SEO downside in using Google+ brand page for news curation?
We are thinking about using our Google+ brand page to curate relevant news from different sources and organize them in Collections. We are confident that we can generate backlinks, followers, and engagement with this strategy. My fear is to suffer some penalty due to the fact that will not be sharing our own content. We will be redirecting the clicks to the website of the owner of the content; using Start a Fire tracking links (https://startafire.com/). Since I am not aware of any Google+ brand page that executed this curated news strategy with success, I decided to post this question. Our goal is to get high ranks for our Google+ brand page for searches to our brand name and for the name of the Collections. BTW, our curated news posts will be automated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grinseo0 -
New page not topping on results
Hi, We have created a new page on our website for same keyword in slug but the page is not showing up for same keyword even combined with website name: website.com/keyword is new page and not listing on top of results for exact search query "website keyword". This page is listing as 3rd result and other pages are making on top even they don't match with page title, h1 tags and URL. This new page is indexed. How long it'll take to Google to adopt this? I don't think it'll remain same forever. Is there anything we can do from our end?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Why are these pages showing up as 404 in Search Console?
This page is showing up as a 404 in Google Search console- https://www.wolfautomation.com/blog/autonics/ It shows it has been linked from these pages- https://www.wolfautomation.com/blog/raffel/ https://www.wolfautomation.com/blog/new-temperature-controllers-from-autonics/ https://www.wolfautomation.com/blog/ge-industrial/ https://www.wolfautomation.com/blog/temp-controller/ https://www.wolfautomation.com/blog/tx4s/ I never created this page, I don't want this page but it keeps showing up. The problem is the link isn't found on those pages anywhere so I can't delete it. What am I missing? How can I get rid of it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
News Errors In Google Search Console
Years ago a site I'm working on was publishing news as one form of content on the site. Since then, has stopped publishing news, but still has a q&a forum, blogs, articles... all kinds of stuff. Now, it triggers "News Errors" in GWT under crawl errors. These errors are "Article disproportionately short" "Article fragmented" on some q&a forum pages "Article too long" on some longer q&a forum pages "No sentences found" Since there are thousands of these forum pages and it's problem seems to be a news critique, I'm wondering what I should do about it. It seems to be holding these non-news pages to a news standard: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en For instance, is there a way and would it be a good idea to get the hell out of Google News, since we don't publish news anymore? Would there be possible negatives worth considering? What's baffling is, these are not designated news urls. The ones we used to have were /news/title-of-the-story per... https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/2481373?hl=en&ref_topic=2481296 Or, does this really not matter and I should just blow it off as a problem. The weird thing is that we recently went from http to https and The Google News interface still has us as http and gives the option to add https, which I am reluctant to do sine we aren't really in the news business anymore. What do you think I should do? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Only The Google Plus URL Appearing In Organic Search (No Images or Info)
Just a quick one, when I search for my brand in Google I see my normal listing but the Google Plus URL is appearing on the right hand side as a link on it's own. I see that other brands have there company info pulled in here. Is there anything I can do to make it appear like other brands have it, (with the images, text, etc.)? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0