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A friend in another forum has changed the title on his index page 4 times trying to get more targeted traffic. Now he's getting deluged with unwanted traffic because he has the same page in the index 4 times with 4 different titles.
Anybody have a similar experience?
he has the same page in the index 4 times with 4 different titles.
If the urls are the same, that definitely shouldn't happen. I'd bet he has different urls like "domain.com" and "domain.com/index.html".
Google is not really economical with their space......
SN
You're right, it shouldn't happen. But it has.
www.domainname.com/index.html
Same page in the serps with four different titles. Which one appears in the serps depends on the search term.
I had 6000 pages indexed, while my site has only 2500 pages. Every page was indexed with many different user tracker codes. Google thinks that these are different pages:mydomain.com/mysite
www.mydomain.com/mysite
mydomain.com/mysite?user1
mydomain.com/mysite?user2etc.
Google is not really economical with their space......
Google knows they are the same page. The urls are just different. I'd worry about being penalized for "duplicate" content.
So, if I have websites that are created for the user and I make them in a way which is helpful for creating statistics and therefore plan my Marketing steps, I should worry about a penalty in Google?
I'm not making my website for Google. Googlebot is not going to buy anything from me.
I believe Google is smarter than giving me a penalty for making a website for the user and for making some business.
Google knows they are the same page. The urls are just different. I'd worry about being penalized for "duplicate" content.
I don't believe there is a duplicate content penalty. What Google will do is filter duplicate pages (or near-duplicates) so that they won't all be listed in the same SERP unless you click the thing at the bottom that says "repeat the search with the omitted results included".
It's a good opportunity to see what kind of update schedule your site is on.
This phenomenom is also a window on the mechanics of their "rolling updates" in terms of giving you some food for thought.
Then how they index your site would be of no concern as well obviously, as you say 100% of your design is for the user and that you do not design for search engines. I think that strategy is very smart. You can use other promotional methods and PPC, and do not have to worry about free listings at all.
But keep in mind. Search engines aren't everything. They have a business to run themselves. They are not going to buy anything from you. And SE's do not care about you either.
There's a big difference between Marketing and SEO.
If I search for Widgets and the result is as following I surely skip the first result.
BLUE WIDGETS, GREEN WIDGETS, ALL WIDGETS
Buy Widgets - Blue Widgets - Green Widgets - Widgets information -
Find Widgets - Cheap Widgets
www.widget.com
Widgets Information Handbook, buy widgets online.
All kinds of widgets - Compare prices and buy online at the lowest prices.
Blue Widgets. Your Widgets Search. ...
www.widgets.com
A friend in another forum has changed the title on his index page 4 times trying to get more targeted traffic. Now he's getting deluged with unwanted traffic because he has the same page in the index 4 times with 4 different titles.
There is no such thing as unwanted traffic, unless he can't afford the bandwidth. Sounds like a good thing to me.
I've love to have 4 different versions of my higest PR page (the index) attracting hits from Google.
thanks to some sloppy coding on my side I now have in the index:
1)mydomain.com/widgets.asp?widget=5
2)mydomain.com/widgets.asp?language=default&widget=5
3)mydomain.com/widgets.asp?widget=5&language=default
notice the last two being exactly the same with the querystrings reversed.
So when I was playing with my title tag I ended having three different versions of my page ein the index.
number 1) stayed the same for three weeks until it was updated
number 2) seemed to be updated on a weekly basis with a new fresh tag each time
number 3) seemed to update on a schedule I still have not figured out yet.
It was great! I got all variations of my title in the different SERPS and my traffic gained about 50%, now, since I stopped playing with the title google has managed to synchronise each version of the page and all is back to normal.
alxdean, that's exactly what I noticed and commented on earlier- glad to know I'm not the only one!
The three week/1 week schedule is what I noticed as well. The other one, I think, is a monthly schedule- which I think corresponds with the PR update which everybody just noticed.
I hope Google works out this indexing bug before people begin to exploit it.
A side effect of rolling update. If you are up to it, you can actually take advantage of this 'update windows'.
Excuse me Arnett, So, if I have websites that are created for the user and I make them in a way which is helpful for creating statistics and therefore plan my Marketing steps, I should worry about a penalty in Google?
I'm not making my website for Google. Googlebot is not going to buy anything from me.
I believe Google is smarter than giving me a penalty for making a website for the user and for making some business.
Well,excuse me. It's what Google Answers told me when I asked them the SAME question. You're missing the point. You're not trying to sell to Googlebot. Googlebot doesn't buy anything but GoogleCookies. If you draw a penalty,your listing is going to get BURIED and you won't draw any traffic at all.
Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
However, the term 'query(a tech term)' is really a misnomer because 'it doesn't actually query/search the server'. What this do is 'just simply, passing a variable or parameter' for further processing by the server. Which, may or may not produce the same result.
As Suzanne have pointed out, there's a lot of applications where 'parameters' are being pass through the URL where the processing has nothing to do with the visual output. Common of which are referrals and session id's.
I think Google is smart enough to analyze as to what's going on otherwise it would be stupid of them to penalize sites that wishes to implement such procedure.
Having said that, I agree with Mcavic that there's no penalty for duplicate pages, possibly ignore/dampen but not penalty.
Cheers
