Indexing of Search Pages
-
I have a question on indexing search pages of an ecommerce or any website. I read Google doesn't recommend this and sites shouldn't allow indexing of their search pages.
I recently attended an SEO event (BrightonSEO) and one of the talks was on search pages and how big players like eBay, Amazon do index their search pages. In fact, it is a core part of the pages that are indexed.
eBay has to do it, as their product pages are on a time frame and Amazon only allows certain category search pages to be indexed. Reviewing my competitors, they are indexing search pages and this is why they have thousands and millions of web pages indexed.
What are your thoughts? I thought search pages were too dynamic (URL strings) and they wouldn't have a unique page title, meta description or rich content to act as a well optimised page.
Am I missing a trick here?
Cyto
-
Hmm, so what it comes down to is that, you can index search pages but provided they have a purpose or add value to the end user.
For instance, A user would search by category whereas an individual product search result isn't necessary when a product page exists.
Thanks Dirk for the links, helps a lot
Cyto
-
Fantastic as always, Dirk!
-
Hi,
If you read this article (https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-results-in-search-results/) - the official guideline is "Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages **that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines". **(added the bold)
The question is: what is a search result page. if you're selling LCD tv's - the page which is showing only Panasonic tv's could be considered a search result from a query on the site, but it could also be considered as a page which offers value for users searching for a Panasonic LCD tv. Idem if you look for 'jobs in Montreal' - one of the first results is http://ca.indeed.com/jobs-in-Montréal,-QC - which is the same result that you would get if you would search Montreal on http://ca.indeed.com/
If these sites didn't index these "search results pages" they would almost never show up in the SERP's. I think the important part is "adding value for the users".
On dynamic search pages (or facetted navigation) Google even made best practices (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html) - even though you could consider all these kind of pages as search results.
Hope this clarifies,
Dirk
-
I can see the issue with auctionbased e-commerce sites. But a search result page could be both dynamic and static:
domain.com/results/name-of-search-string
or
domain.com/results/?q=something
I think that optimizing a search result page would be rather difficult since it depends on a unique search which is inpredictable. However, using a static URL for a result page is no good either, as it creates a ton of pages in an index with no meaning.
I wouldn't think that any common site should index their search result pages.
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
-
Multiple links from same domain (different pages) considered in credibility of backlinks?
Hi, Let's say there are multiple backlinks from different pages of same domain to different pages of other domain like below: Website A: Page 1 -----------> Website B: Page 1 Website A: Page 2 -----------> Website B: Page 2 Do the pages of Website B pages will get backlinks authority equally or they don't get much backlinks impact as they have multiple backlinks from same domain? There were old school stories that Google ignores second link from same domain.....etc... So, please suggest on this. Thank you. Note: The question is NOT about content relevancy or domain authority score of the backlinks.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Still no good search results after 2 months of indexation
Hi guys, One of our website (https://www.residentiebosrand.be/) has been online for about two months. It's indexed and Google shows search results. But the website is not ranking on the keywords it's supposed to be ranking: 'residentie bosrand'. How come we still don't find the website on the first pages in the search results, while these are the main keywords on the website's URL, page, ... ? Best regards,
Algorithm Updates | | conversal0 -
What happens when we canonical and point to a page which has been redirected to another page? Google response!
Hi all, I would like to know the different scenarios Google going to respond when we use canonical and redirect for duplicate pages. Let's say A to B are duplicate pages with 95% same content and C Doesn't have same content but context wise similar and priority page we expect to rank for. What happens if we canonical from A to B and set redirect from B to C? What if both A and B are pointed to C with canonical? What if A or B deleted and other one is canonical to C? Note: We can noindex or 301 redirect as they have their own visitors. This is more about showing most relevant content to the audience and avoid duplicate content in search results. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking impact: Traffic in website pages vs sub directory vs sub domain
Hi all, I need clarification on this. Not every time website main pages rank, some times even pages from sub directories or sub domains like blogs or guides; especially for branded keywords. I just wonder what happens when so much traffic is generating in sub directories and sub domains just because of limited landing pages in main website. Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Training - How Google Crawls & Indexes Websites
Hi Does anyone know of any online training resources/webinars/training UK based that will cover the following for SEO: Why monitoring how search engines crawl and index content is important and how this can improve your SEO performance Using Google advanced operators to evaluate website indexation How to use log file data to gain insight into how search engines crawl and index content Techniques to control how search engines crawl and index content How search engines deal with JavaScript, common frameworks and SEO considerations I'm trying to develop my technical knowledge - I have always been more focused on content/KWD research/optimisation. Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
How do you get a url to show as a tagline in google mobile search?
When searching in google via mobile, I am seeing urls changed to taglines. I have attached pictures that show the url in a web search, but a tag line from the mobile search. Does anyone know how to get a tagline to show in place of a url in a mobile search? Any advice would be appreciated! uLkYWRx.png wljXRI3.png
Algorithm Updates | | David-Kley0 -
How to prevent my search results being affected by the previous searches I have made ?
How to ensure that the search I have made is not based on my past search history and the results in my cache ? I don't want to sign out of Google every time and then clear my cache. Does Incognito Mode in Google Chrome work or is there any other way of making my search results unbiased ?
Algorithm Updates | | EricMoore0 -
Google indexing my website's Search Results pages. Should I block this?
After running the SEOmoz crawl test, i have a spreadsheet of 11,000 urls of which 6381 urls are search results pages from our website that have been indexed. I know I've read that /search should be blocked from the engines, but can't seem to find that information at this point. Does anyone have facts behind why they should be blocked? Or not blocked?
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10