Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
"nofollow pages" or "duplicate content"?
-
We have a huge site with lots of geographical-pages in this structure:
domain.com/country/resort/hotel
domain.com/country/resort/hotel/facts
domain.com/country/resort/hotel/images
domain.com/country/resort/hotel/excursions
domain.com/country/resort/hotel/maps
domain.com/country/resort/hotel/car-rental
Problem is that the text on ie. /excursions is often exactly the same on
.../alcudia/hotel-sea-club/excursion
and
.../alcudia/hotel-beach-club/excursion
The two hotels offer the same excursions, and the intro text on the pages are the exact same throughout the entire site. This is also a problem on the /images and /car-rental pages. I think in most cases the only difference on these pages is the Title, description and H1.
These pages do not attract a lot of visits through search-engines.
But to avoid them being flagged as duplicate content (we have more than 4000 of these pages - /excursions, /maps, /car-rental, /images), do i add a nofollow-tag to these, do i block them in robots.txt or should i just leave them and live with them being flagged as duplicate content?
Im waiting for our web-team to add a function to insert a geographical-name in the text, so i could add ie #HOTELNAME# in the text and thereby avoiding the duplicate text.
Right now we have intros like:
When you visit the hotel ...
instead of:
When you visit Alcudia Sea Club
But untill the web-team has fixed these GEO-tags, what should i do?
What would you do and why?
-
I guess it depends on what is the intention behind these pages? Are you attempting to get more traffic for search? Or, are these pages simply for people visiting the site? If it is more about people and not search engines, I wouldn't really worry about the duplicate content issues (provided the pages make sense to users). Adding a nofollow to the links referencing these pages (and a noindex,follow on these pages) will prevent Google from crawling unnecessary pages and indexing unnecessary pages.
I've had similar situations come up (it always seems to on large sites). Typically what I've tried to do is identify which pages have the best shot at getting activity within the search results (based on keyword research, link research, etc.). On those pages, I do everything I can to have really unique content that sets those pages apart (I'm talking bigger scale changes, as opposed to geo-targeting changes). For the other pages where there isn't such a great chance with search engines, I use the nofollow tag to prevent Google from accessing those pages. That seems to help keep the focus for SEO on the right 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
-
"Noindex, follow" for thin pages?
Hey there Mozzers, I have a question regarding Thin pages. Unfortunately, we have Thin pages, almost empty to be honest. I have the idea to ask the dev team to do "noindex, follow" on these pages. What do you think? Has someone faced this situation before? Will appreciate your input!
Technical SEO | | Europarl_SEO_Team0 -
Duplicate Content on a Page Due to Responsive Version
What are the implications if a web designer codes the content of the site twice into the page in order to make the site responsive? I can't add the url I'm afraid but the H1 and the content appear twice in the code in order to produce both a responsive version and a desktop version. This is a Wordpress site. Is Google clever enough to distinguish between the 2 versions and treat them individually? Or will Google really think that the content has been repeated on the same page?
Technical SEO | | Wagada0 -
Magento Dublicate Content (Noindex and Rel"canonical")
Hi All, Just looking for some advice regarding my website on magento. We by mistake didnt enable canonical tags and noindex tags so had a big problem with dublicate content from filter pages but also have URLs to Cats as Yes so this didnt help with not having canonical tags enabled. We now have everything enabled for a few weeks now but dont see much drop in indexed pages in google. (currently 27k and we have only 5k products) My question basically is how do we speed up noindexation of dublicate content and also would you change URL to cats as No so google just now sees the url to products? (my concerns with this is would leaving it to Yes help because it will hopefully read the canonical tags on products now) Thank you in advance Michael
Technical SEO | | TogetherCare0 -
Is duplicate content ok if its on LinkedIn?
Hey everyone, I am doing a duplicate content check using copyscape, and realized we have used a ton of the same content on LinkedIn as our website. Should we change the LinkedIn company page to be original? Or does it matter? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
How to block "print" pages from indexing
I have a fairly large FAQ section and every article has a "print" button. Unfortunately, this is creating a page for every article which is muddying up the index - especially on my own site using Google Custom Search. Can you recommend a way to block this from happening? Example Article: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/idx.php/11/183/Maintenance-of-Mature-Locks-6-months-/article/How-do-I-get-sand-out-of-my-dreads.html Example "Print" page: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/article.php?id=052&action=print
Technical SEO | | dreadmichael0 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Which pages to "noindex"
I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on. I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on: legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
Technical SEO | | mmaes
search results page
blog archive and category pages Thanks for any insight of this.0