caveman - 8:58 pm on Oct 2, 2005 (gmt 0)

Dayo_UK, yes.

Tinus, I mean that if they find four pages on the same site about a certain kind of bee, and the four pages are similarly structured, and one is a main page for that bee, and the other three are subpages about the same bee, each reflecting a variation of that bee, the site owner now seems to run the risk that they will find all of the pages too similar, and filter them all, not just the three subpages.

There are so many possible variations to what might specifically lead to all of the pages being filtered that generalizing becomes difficult past a point. Suffice to say that the more similar the related pages are, the greater the risk that all of them will be filtered out. At least that is how it seems to us, after looking at a substantial number of examples across sites in different categories, some owned by us, others not.

I can see filtering out the three subpages (IF it's really helping G in their battle against spam), since landing on the main page for a set of related pages will get you close enough as a user. But filtering all the pages just hurts the user, since the resource (i.e. the site) is now dropping out of the SERP's completely for some longer tail terms.

[edited by: caveman at 9:13 pm (utc) on Oct. 2, 2005]