How does a search engine bot navigate past a .PDF link?
-
We have a large number of product pages that contain links to a .pdf of the technical specs for that product. These are all set up to open in a new window when the end user clicks.
If these pages are being crawled, and a bot follows the link for the .pdf, is there any way for that bot to continue to crawl the site, or does it get stuck on that dangling page because it doesn't contain any links back to the site (it's a .pdf) and the "back" button doesn't work because the page opened in a new window?
If this situation effectively stops the bot in its tracks and it can't crawl any further, what's the best way to fix this?
1. Add a rel="nofollow" attribute
2. Don't open the link in a new window so the back button remains finctional
3. Both 1 and 2
or
4. Create specs on the page instead of relying on a .pdf
Here's an example page: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/product/mackie-cfx12-mkii-compact-mixer - The technical spec .pdf is located under the "Downloads" tab [the content is all on one page in the source code - the tabs are just a design element]
Thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Dana
-
Thanks very much Christopher. This is an excellent explanation. What do you think of Charlie and EGOL's suggestions regarding making sure that there are links embedded in these PDFs pointing either back to the product page or even to the home page?
In your opinion, is this something worth doing? If so, why?
-
Hi Dana,
" ... you are right, one of the fundamental questions I still have is how does a bot behave when it finds an orphaned page like one of these? Does it just revert back to the sitemap and move one? Does it automatically go back to the last non-dead end page and move on from there? What does it do?"
Bots are not really like a single spider that has to crawl around the web that can get trapped when entering an orphaned page with no back-button. When a bot enters a site, it creates a list of all the internal pages that are linked from the home page. Then it visits each page on that list and keeps adding more linked pages to that list. Each time it adds more pages to the list, it only adds new unique pages and does not add duplicates. It also keeps track of which pages it has already visited. When all the pages have been visited once, and no new pages are discovered that are not already on the list, all of the pages have been crawled.
Best,
Christopher -
Hi Don,
Thanks so much for responding and while the answers I have received so far did give me some direction, you are right, one of the fundamental questions I still have is how does a bot behave when it finds an orphaned page like one of these? Does it just revert back to the sitemap and move one? Does it automatically go back to the last non-dead end page and move on from there? What does it do?
Thanks for chiming in. I'd love it if someone more familiar with how a bot actually crawls links like this on a page would jump in with an answer.
Dana
-
Thanks Charlie. I think this is a good suggestion. I work 9-6 too, and just so happen to be the in-house SEO strategist, so this stuff is what I'm there to do. I don't mind the mundane aspects of SEO because the payoff is usually pretty rewarding! Now I know what I'm doing on Monday (on top of a dozen other things!)
Thanks again!
-
I would spend the time needed to do an assessment of these pages.
** how many of them have external links
** how many of them pull traffic from search or other sites
** how many of them are currently useful (are people looking at them)
I would delete (and redirect the URL) of any page that answers "no" to the three items above. These are "dead weight" on your site.
Also, if these are .pdfs of print ads then they might simply be images in a pdf. (test this by searching for an exact phrase from one of them in quotes and include site:yourdomain.com in the query. Keep in mind that google can read the text in some images embedded in pdfs.
I had a lot of pdfs with images on one of my site and got hit with a panda problem. I think that Google thought that the .pdfs were thin content. So I used rel=canonical to assign them to the most relevant page using .htaccess. The panda problem was solved after a couple of months.
Also, keep in mind that .pdfs can be used for conversions. You can embed "add to cart" buttons and links into them and they will function just as on a web page.
If any of these pdfs are pulling in tons I traffic I would figure out how I can put the pdf to better use or create webpage (and redirect the pdf) to best monetize/convert or whatever you business goals dictate.
-
Can a bot navigate via a back button?
I don't think so. They can follow links but they can't "click".
-
Hi Dana
I think your question has been dodged a tad. I ways lead to understand that a .pdf or any page that opens in a new tab and does not link back to the original site, (dangling page) is not a problem. The reason being is that crawlers don't really care how a page is opened. Because the crawler will fork at every link and crawls each new page/link from each fork, when it finds a orphan or dangling page it just stops. This of course is not an issue since if the crawler has forked at each link.
So the question is how a SE treats .pdf's rather how does it treat orphan page. Maybe somebody who works with crawlers can confirm or educate us both on they work.
Don
-
Many thanks to both you and EGOL for excellent answers!
-
Thanks EGOL. Yes, many of these .pdfs could be and are referenced by other sites. Given that there's no link from the .pdf back to our site, we really are missing out on a huge opportunity. I thought this might be the case as I pondered the whole concept of "dangling links" that was discussed in a SEOMoz blog post this week.
I agree about the last point regarding opening in a new window being more of a usability issue than a problem for SEO. I agree with you completely that opening in the same window is way better for the end user.
Can a bot navigate via a back button?
Thanks very much to both you and Charlie for your excellent answers!
-
lol, thank heaven's they aren't spammy. However, they aren't particularly helfpul either. You see, about 3,000 of them are old .pdf versions of print advertising campaigns, going back as far as 2005. They contain obsolete pricing, products, etc. Unfortunately, instead of archiving them off the server, they've been continuously archived in a sub-directory of our main website.
Nearly all of it is indexed. It seems to me the best thing to do for these is to include a statement that the content is an old advertisement and include a llnk to our current "special offers" page.
What do you think of that as a strategy for at least giving engines and humans a means to navigate to someplace current on the site?
-
I see 6000 pdfs as an amazing opportunity. Get links on those pages and it will funnel a lot of power through your site.
If that was my site, we would be on that job immediately. Could be a huge gain for some easy work.
-
Go back and rework our .pdfs so they at least contain a link back to the homepage?
Yes! Absolutely! And, link them to other relevant pages. If these are reference documents they could be pulling in a lot of links and traffic from other sites.
In addition toAs well as configure the hyperlinks so they open in the same window instead of a new one?
In my opinion, this is not an SEO issue. This is a usability issue. I would have them open in the same window so the back button is available.
-
Thank you Charlie. In our case, our .pdfs contain no links in them at all. There is nothing for a bot (or a human) that will navigate them out of the .pdf....not even the back button.
Considering that, and EGOL's response below, would the best course of action be to include, at the very least, an active link back to our homepage from all of our .pdf files?
We have as many as 6,000 .pdfs.
Thanks,
Dana
-
Thanks EGOL,
Yes, I understand well that .pdf documents can be indexed. That's not my concern. My concern is that a bot that navigates to one of our many .pdf tech specs documents, which, incidentally, contains no outbound links to anything, would then become trapped and not be able to continue crawling the site. This is particularly true because we have them set up to open in a new window. In the example above, sure, there's a text reference back to the site "www.kingdom.com" - but it isn't a link in the .pdf. There are no links, in any of our .pdfs.
So, what is the best way to deal with this? Go back and rework our .pdfs so they at least contain a link back to the homepage? In addition toAs well as configure the hyperlinks so they open in the same window instead of a new one?
-
.pdf documents are crawled by bots and they accumulate pagerank just like .html pages.
You can include links in them to other documents on the web and bots will crawl those links and pagerank will flow through them.
.pdf documents can be given a "title tag" equivalent by opening their properties and giving the document a title. This title will display in the SERPs. .pfd documents can be hard to beat in the SERPs if they are optimized and have links from a competitive number of other web documents.
Lots of document formats behave this way. Excel, PowerPoint, Word for example.
In my opinion, .pdf documents can trigger a Panda problem for your site if you have a lot of them with trivial or duplicate content (as in print versions of web documents). They can be given rel=canonical through .htaccess to solve the Panda problem but Google often takes a long long time (sometimes months) to recognize the canonical and use that instruction.
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
-
Too Many Page Links
I have 8 niche websites for golf clubs. This was done to carve out tight niches for specific types of clubs then only broadens each club by type - i.e. better player, game improvement, max game improvement. So far, for fairly young sites, <1 year, they are doing fairly well as I build content. Running campaigns has alerted me to one problem - too many on-page links. And because I use Wordpress those links are on each page in the right sidebar and lead to the other sites. Even though visitors arrive via organic search in most cases they tend to eventually exit to one of the other sites or they click on a product (Ebay) and venture off to hopefully make a purchase. Ex: Drivers site will have a picture link for each of the other 7 sites. Question: If I have one stie (like a splash page) used as one link to that page listing all the sites with a brief explanation of each site will this cause visitors to bounce off because they will have one click, than the list and other clicks depending on what other club/site they would like to go to. The links all open in new windows. This would cut down on the number of links per page of each site but will it cause too much work for visitors and cause them to leave?
Technical SEO | | NicheGuy0 -
If I get a natural link for a great site and I have my keyword with anchor text in this link, how should I proceed?
If I get a natural link for a great site and I have my keyword with anchor text in this link, how should I proceed? I need to contact the site and ask to remove the link or request the removal of the anchor text and leave only the site URL? Or yet do not I need to worry about this issue?
Technical SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
What i should do about bad links ?
Hi, my blog is http://www.dota2club.com/ and i have many bad links to my blog what i should do about that and how ? i started 10 days ago guest blogging but my bad links from before are hurting my blog. please help 🙂 thank you !!!
Technical SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Exchange Links - Problem or Not ?
There's a company that sells a real estate portal sites ready for several companies.
Technical SEO | | imoveiscamposdojordao
And when they install this system they always leave each site in a file calledimobiliarias.php that lists all properties that use your system, so there is a hugeexchange of links between the same sites.
So you can see with the Open Site Explorer that all sites have the same Backlinks.
This would not cause problems with regard to exchange links?
Loss of position or something? Thank you guys.! Sorry. 😛 Google Translator.0 -
Google Custom Site Search
I am an admin on a google custom site search account. I am also the owner of a verified webmaster tools account for the same site. The Custom Search control panel will not let me add URL's or a Site map for on demand indexing, but says "you must submit a sitemap of your own verified sites". Has anyone else has this issue? Does the Owner of the custom search account have to be the owner of the webmaster account, or can the logged in admin be? Thanks
Technical SEO | | SEMPassion0 -
Do web pages have to be linked to a menu?
I have a situation where people search for terms like, say 1978 one dollar bill. Even though there never was a 1978 one dollar bill. I want to make a page to capture these searches but since there wasn't such a thing as a one dollar bill I don't want it connected to the rest of my content which is reality based. Does that make sense? Anyway, my question is, can I publish pages that aren't linked to my menu structure but that will be searchable or, am I going to have to figure out a way to make these oddball pages accessible through my menu?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
How to find all the links to my site
hi i have been trying to find all the links that i have to my site http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk but i am not having any luck. I have used the open explorer but it is not showing all the links but when i go to my google webmaster page it shows me more pages than it does on the semoz tool. can anyone help me sort this out and find out exactly what links are going into my site many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Advice on display this content on my page for search engines
Hi, my website http://www.in2town.co.uk/Holiday-News is about bringing travel and holiday news to our readers of our lifestyle magazine but i am having problems at the moment with the layout. What i mean by this is, i have written content on the page as an introduction so google knows what this section of the site is about but to be honest it looks rubbish with having the introduction there and i would like to know if i am doing the right thing by having the content there for google to know what my site is about. I have tried taking it away and noticed i dropped in the rankings and when i have put it back up i go up in the rankings, can anyone please give me some advice over this issue
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860