Does calendar events fools robots ?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by wmg, Jan 27, 2006.

  1. #1
    I just finished an events section in my site and i have a calendar with, obviously, days month and years...the links inside the calendar are ".htm" pages rewritten with url_rewrite..so i have a very big amount of pages ready for the bots..

    The question is :
    may this affect negatively my actual good ranking by fooling the search engine to index pages until 2099 or more ?
    Anyone is using an agenda with no problems of ranking and indexing ?
     
    wmg, Jan 27, 2006 IP
  2. dave487

    dave487 Peon

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    #2
    Do you want the pages to be indexed?

    If not then use robots.txt to exclude them. There is little point having hundreds of pages indexed unless they contain good content.

    If you do allow them to be indexed make sure they have different title, h1 and meta tags.
     
    dave487, Jan 27, 2006 IP
  3. classifieds

    classifieds Sopchoppy Flash

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    #3
    DO NOT DO THIS!!!

    I had a Mambo events cal and didn't pay attention to it when I configured it. G/Y/M indexed the empty pages out to the year 3500 and by the time I noticed what was going on it was too late. It tripped filters on all three engines and my rankings disappeared.

    I changed the configuration so that only days that had actual events existed but because Mambo was not designed with SEO in mind I had to get a hack written to return a 404 status for all the pages in the index.

    It took 8 months to clear the mess out and things are back to normal now.

    BUT DO NOT ALLOW EMPTY CALENDAR PAGES TO EXIST!!!!

     
    classifieds, Jan 27, 2006 IP
  4. wmg

    wmg Guest

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    #4
    I suspected that empty pages can cause some problem...
    But what can i do to now...simply remove the calendar does not seem a good solution...
    Any idea ?
     
    wmg, Jan 27, 2006 IP
  5. classifieds

    classifieds Sopchoppy Flash

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    #5
    Can you configure it to only show days/months/weeks that have events?

    If so do it now. If not I would take it down.

    Either way make sure your code returns a 404 status on all pages that do not exist (are empty).
     
    classifieds, Jan 27, 2006 IP
  6. wmg

    wmg Guest

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    #6
    for the moment i will leave calendar's dates dynamic.. don't rewrite them..
    Thanks for sharing your experience..
     
    wmg, Jan 27, 2006 IP