Navigation for search
-
We are getting ready to launch a site that has great navigation for users, but it is not so great for search engines. As long as we are ethical about it, does anyone see a downside to detecting a bot user agent and displaying different nav to it? I suppose some could consider it cloaking, but I noticed amazon uses this strategy and they don't seem to be getting a big penalty lol. We are not going to do anything shady with it, just offer the bot a different way to access our content. Any thoughts?
-
I would never recommend altering your site in any way specifically for a bot. Google has repeatedly stated that would be seen as cloaking and you definitely run the risk of a penalty. It can happen any time. Do you really want that cloud over your head?
Even if Amazon is able to do it, you are not Amazon. Despite any statement to the contrary, a huge site like Amazon can do things that you or I may not be able to do. We can debate the fairness of it, but we are not on a level playing field with them.
You seem to really want to do this, so feel free. But x months from now you will likely make a post "My rankings dropped and I can't figure out why", and then someone will notice the setting and that will be the answer.
-
Could you please share the site in question? we might be able to give a much more insightful thought
-
Thanks for your suggestion Alex!
-
All the content will be accessible through the sitemap which will be displayed in both versions (the user and the bot) version of the site. The only difference is the navigation will change from one version to another. It could be perceived as a gray area, even though we really are just making it more friendly to bots not trying to be deceptive at all.
-
And that should be okay if they see the content is the same between your normal version and the spider version, just a difference in presentation. It becomes a problem when you start serving drastically different content.
-
How about adding an indexable version of the navigation and then hiding it with CSS? The crawlers would see that. I haven't thought about whether that'd be a good idea, just a quick thought.
-
We usually operate under the principal that would this be ok if it were manually reviewed? In our plan, I am pretty confident that it would pass. We are planning on making what is displayed to bots very basic text link navigation. Our XML and html sitemaps will correspond well with the bot navigation (so to show G we really are not trying to hide anything). And yes we could make the nav more search friendly, but one of our main goals is to have the site look as clean as possible. As far as I can tell Amazon uses this method to avoid duplicate content issues and make their site generally more crawlable which is why I think it is on the table as an option.
-
Depending on how much you're changing, I think it could be considered cloaking and end up getting you in trouble. You'll get looked at any time you're sniffing for bots and serving up different content. Are there other ways you could make the navigation index-able?
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
-
Solved Recommended title length for Google search results
I read the recommended title length is 50-60 characters depending on alphabets, etc,.
On-Page Optimization | | Mike555
Anyways, my question is, is there any harm of having longer title?
If all my important keywords are within the 50-60 characters that will show up on search results, I can still make the title longer, it's just that those keywords outside won't have any effect on search results?0 -
How to get stars in my search results?
Is it possible for me to take my Google reviews and show them under my homepage as stars when my page is shown in search results. I provide a service, so I don't have separate product reviews. My homepage is what ranks most in the searches I target. If this is possible, what is the best way to do it technically? I have a wordpress site. Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CalicoKitty20001 -
Fixing Index Errors in the new Google Search Console - Help
Hi, So I have started using the new Search Console and for one of my clients, there are a few 'Index Coverage Errors'. In the old version you could simply, analyse, test and then mark any URLs as fixed - does anyone know if that is possible in the new version? There are options to validate errors but no 'mark as fixed' options. Do you need to validate the errors before you can fix them?
On-Page Optimization | | daniel-brooks0 -
Does redoing a homepage impact search rankings?
Hello, all! Does anyone know if redesigning a website's homepage affects search rankings? I'm considering redoing my website's homepage - including rewriting the copy, and perhaps in Leadpages - but I don't want to compromise search. I gather that SEO is a bit of a black box, but am curious to hear others' perspectives before moving ahead. Thanks in advance for sharing your time and thoughts!
On-Page Optimization | | lightsfilmschool0 -
Page title in Google search is defferent
Hello, Google changes the title of the main page only for my sites in this way: What I configured: My page title | my site name How it shows in Google: My site name: My page title If I checked some meta tags analyzer it will show my configured page title and also in Bing.com So what do you thing about it. Best Regards, Housam
On-Page Optimization | | anubis20 -
Is it OK to include name of your town to the title tag or H1 tag on a blog to enhance local search results
I recently attended a webinar by ETNA Interactive on local search SEO. The presenter recommended including the name of your town in the title of the blog to increase local search SEO. Is this OK? Ive always been concerned that it is such an obvious attempt to rank locally that Google would consider it "spammy" ? black hat, "sketchy" or otherwise manipulative. Have the rules changed? Is it OK to do? Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
How to exclude URL filter searches in robots.txt
When I look through my MOZ reports I can see it's included 'pages' which it shouldn't have included i.e. adding filtering rules such as this one http://www.mydomain.com/brands?color=364&manufacturer=505 How can I exclude all of these filters in the robots.txt? I think it'll be: Disallow: /*?color=$ Is that the correct syntax with the $ sign in it? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | neenor0 -
If a site has https versions of every page, will the search engines view them as duplicate pages?
A client's site has HTTPS versions of every page for their site and it is possible to view both http and https versions of the page. Do the search engines view this as duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | harryholmes0070