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nofollow on "sort by..." links

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by Kerosene, Jan 11, 2006.

0
  1. #1
    I've been going through the process of adding Google sitemaps and notice there's a lot of "sort by" links that point to dynamically created pages that are all essentially the same page, just with the contents moved around.

    e.g
    bookstores.html
    bookstores.html?amp;sort=3a&page=1
    bookstores.html?amp;sort=2d&page=1

    On my directory sites, should I put nofollow on the "sort by name", "sort by location" type links?
     
    Kerosene, Jan 11, 2006 IP
  2. dave487

    dave487 Peon

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    #2
    I wouldn't bother. What you should do is try and create different titles for these pages so google likes them more.
     
    dave487, Jan 12, 2006 IP
  3. mdvaldosta

    mdvaldosta Peon

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    #3
    Yes put nofollow tags. It's plausable that G might see similar content and levy some sort of penalty. Either way, if the content is the same then just have one link. And, if the title is the same then most definately you don't want that.

    I'd rather have 300 STRONG pages than 900 WEAK pages.
     
    mdvaldosta, Jan 12, 2006 IP
  4. jestep

    jestep Prominent Member

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    #4
    I agree. I had this same problem which left me with about 90 exact duplicate pages, just with different product orders. Definitely do a nofollow.

    We actually went further and blocked ?sort with robots.txt. From what I have seen, Yahoo and MSN don't care much about a nofollow tag, so we also used robots as well as nofollow.
     
    jestep, Jan 12, 2006 IP
  5. BILZ

    BILZ Peon

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    #5
    I wouldnt worry about using nofollow. If Google sees some of the pages as duplicate, it will just ignore the extra pages.
     
    BILZ, Jan 12, 2006 IP
  6. Kerosene

    Kerosene Alpha & Omega™ Staff

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    #6
    Well I've added nofollow to the 'sort by' links.

    What about when the page has 2 identical links. Like in the main body of the page, and an identical link in the footer. Should I nofollow one of them?
     
    Kerosene, Jan 12, 2006 IP
  7. jestep

    jestep Prominent Member

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    #7
    I don't think I'd worry about this one. The page is the same either way, so it isn't a duplicate content issue. Unless you want to ensure that there is only one anchor text into the page, I'd just leave it the same.
     
    jestep, Jan 13, 2006 IP
  8. T0PS3O

    T0PS3O Feel Good PLC

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    #8
    Would you mind pasting the exact code?
     
    T0PS3O, Jan 13, 2006 IP
  9. jestep

    jestep Prominent Member

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    #9
    Sure thing:
    
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /user/
Disallow: /partners/
Disallow: ?sort
Disallow: ?cat_sub
Disallow: ?source
    Code (markup):
    We also has a few occurrences of spidered affiliate links, which were also removed.

    Also if you only use dynamic tags for tracking or sorting purposes, you can use this:
     
    jestep, Jan 13, 2006 IP
    T0PS3O likes this.