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more on internal search results and nofollow

by Steviebone
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have some topic article pages that contain links to perform custom searches of law based on topic context/content. Without going into avid detail, there are potentially millions of them. Placing nofollow on each of these links could potentially create an extremely massive number of nofollows linked to internal pages on the site. I am reluctant to do this.

Would not a better approach be to just place a noindex on the linked page instead?

And back to another question that went unanswered previously. If I have a page of search results with many links to internal pages shouldn't I leave these follow as well (even if the page itself is noindex?). My understanding is that the more links you have to a specific page on your site (internally) the more important google thinks that page is, correct?

Thanks to all those who have been helping me. Although I am a life long programmer I am still fairly new to SEO and I'm trying to understand many of the concepts in an unusual context. The site is very very large and does not lend itself to the simple "these are my keywords" approach as people use the resources in a thousand different ways. And any mistake (or stroke of genius) is multiplied exponentially because the site is scripted and very large. I am NOT editing hard coded pages one at a time but rather modifying complicated scripts that generate millions of pages of content.
#internal #nofollow #results #search
  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    I would consider the situation you are in not so much a catch 22 as it is a straight up conundrum.

    I think you need to look at your site as "living" there is nothing static. ( or very little ) so your site is going to forever grow based on the ideas that search from its end users will broaden its plausible reach dictated by end user context. If you start no-following or no indexing you would be in essence cutting or stopping that growth.

    I am sure I am working with a way smaller site. 8 months ago when I started I had 3000 pages indexed. today I have close to 10,000. Take those numbers to the level you are at, and I am sure exponentially the numbers are stupid. Out of pure need on my end to clear out and ease the database, and pull the risk of over redundant and thin content being created dynamically, I had to go in and code as much out as I could.

    As explained in however many threads now LOL I didn't want to squash the growth, I am just ensuring that the growth is advantages to me, to google/bing etc, and to the end user.

    The questions I would start looking at is more on your server end. at X amount of growth, when will my current server situation become critical. In terms of the growth, as much as it is dynamically scalable, what about the hard side? is that scalable as well?

    Is the extension of content and the added context value of the content reciprocating returns? Or are you growing and not gaining?

    Somewhere in all of this there has to be a means to an end. and defining what the "End" is will help determine what the "Means" are.
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    Success is an ACT not an idea
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Ah, an intelligent reply. Thank you. It's a lot of gray area and coding for scale can be tricky as both the good and bad are accentuated. There is less margin for error, hence a good deal of thought along with some judicious research as well as testing (where feasible) is called for.

      Originally Posted by savidge4 View Post

      I would consider the situation you are in not so much a catch 22 as it is a straight up conundrum.

      I think you need to look at your site as "living" there is nothing static. ( or very little ) so your site is going to forever grow based on the ideas that search from its end users will broaden its plausible reach dictated by end user context. If you start no-following or no indexing you would be in essence cutting or stopping that growth.

      I am sure I am working with a way smaller site. 8 months ago when I started I had 3000 pages indexed. today I have close to 10,000. Take those numbers to the level you are at, and I am sure exponentially the numbers are stupid. Out of pure need on my end to clear out and ease the database, and pull the risk of over redundant and thin content being created dynamically, I had to go in and code as much out as I could.

      As explained in however many threads now LOL I didn't want to squash the growth, I am just ensuring that the growth is advantages to me, to google/bing etc, and to the end user.

      The questions I would start looking at is more on your server end. at X amount of growth, when will my current server situation become critical. In terms of the growth, as much as it is dynamically scalable, what about the hard side? is that scalable as well?

      Is the extension of content and the added context value of the content reciprocating returns? Or are you growing and not gaining?

      Somewhere in all of this there has to be a means to an end. and defining what the "End" is will help determine what the "Means" are.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    Just noindex the search results pages. Once you've done that, there'll be no need to nofollow the links in the search results since Google won't index them anymore.
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    ONE HOUR INDEXING - STOP WASTING MONEY ON LINKS GOOGLE NEVER FINDS
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by SEO Power View Post

      Just noindex the search results pages. Once you've done that, there'll be no need to nofollow the links in the search results since Google won't index them anymore.
      In that case I think Google won't index the search result page itself but it would follow the links and index those pages.

      Are there any proven cases of explicitly un-excluded search result pages degrading overall rankings for other pages on the domain?
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