Sidebar etiquette, what matters and what hurts.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Since Panda rolled out and Google announced up to 500 changes per year it's apparent that webmasters need to study every aspect of everything on their web pages to spot possible pitfalls.

I'd like to study the sidebar and pick your brains.

In theory if it's good for your visitors it's good for your website but I'm wondering if that's true to a non-human algorithm that is constantly under attack by those who would game the system.

examples:

- If your site is about blue widgets and you display a few blue widgets with current prices from various shops in your sidebar is that a good thing?

The answer is yes for visitors, and your bottom line, but do those links earn you some ranking loss due to being affiliate perhaps?

- If your site posts recent comments in the sidebar, with links to the pages the comments were made on, is that a good thing?

The answer is yes for visitors, they get to see what's being said and where, but is THAT causing a rankings loss due to having repeated text across multiple pages?

What exactly is "safe" in the sidebar and what should be moderated to avoid losing rank? I know that as a webmaster I should not worry about rank but that's not realistic since without it the visitors don't see your pages. your thoughts ?

[Simsi]

but do those links earn you some ranking loss due to being affiliate perhaps?

Personally I think that Google doesn't penalise you for being an affiliate per se. In fact, a good affiliate may even have an advantage.

Reasoning? An affiliate can play an important role as aggregator and offer up (theoretically) unbiased comparitive data and reviews that a product retailer or service provider often cannot - or at least not without obvious bias.

Of course we know that many affiliates simply bang up any old text and promo material they can get their hands on of course and lazy though it is, ultimately the information provided is no worse than the retailer themselves.

Thus, it's my opinion that the percentage that make an effort to provide clearly useful data to enable customers to make purchasing decisions within their niche provide added value for Google and their customers.

Just because someone like Ad*d*s are a top brand doesn't make all their products the best available for every consumer, many of whom have individual needs. It makes no sense for Audi to be #1 for "new shiny car" because rarely does one retailer suit all.

This is where affiliates can play an important role for the customer and if the customer is happy, Google is happy.

[deadsea]

We have links in our sidebar for city widgets:
New York Widgets
Los Angeles Widgets
Denver Widgets
etc.

One theory of ours is that Google dislikes large lists of links and repetitive anchor text more than it used to. I've been using links like this in the nav for years and have had good success with it. Recently, it seems it isn't working as well.

We are testing cutting down the number of links and dropping "widget" from the anchor text:
Widgets:
New York
Los Angeles
Denver
etc.

[walkman]

You are right, what is good for users is not in many cases good for Panda. The more "Latest" 'popular'' 'related' etc you add the more internal dupe content you'll have. Will you take that chance when a debilitating Panda penalty is at least a 3 month one?

Google may say it's Ok and then slam you the next update.

[johnhh]

We are testing cutting down the number of links and dropping "widget" from the anchor text:
Widgets:
New York
Los Angeles
Denver
etc.

Um - we've been doing that for years - still got caught by Panda
Don't try and be bambooziled by a panda !

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I should add that "sidebar" simply means code below the main content. As a person I look at it as a separate section of the site but in reality it's just one page of code.

That means different sections get different weight with Google. Which means my question was "what is best in the content and what is ok for the sidebar?".

An interesting asside - if you use the Google micro data testing tool and you place the info in your sidebar Google's tool says "ratings will not be displayed in serps since we don't think this section of your page is about the main subject". (not exactly those words but Google knows sidebar is not content). Should affiliate offers be in main content or in sidebars to have the least negative impact? Is repetitive text ok in the sidebar but not the main content? How about external links?

What exactly is safe for the sidebar besides category links ?

[tedster]

if you use the Google micro data testing tool and you place the info in your sidebar Google's tool says "ratings will not be displayed in serps since we don't think this section of your page is about the main subject". (not exactly those words but Google knows sidebar is not content)

It just means you're not using appropriate microdata or RDFs formats that Google can read to display rich snippets for the page.

I use sidebars successfully for all kinds of content - related articles, related items for sale, call-out boxes from the main article's text, most currently popular, news... never worried about it.

Given the tone of your new thread start [webmasterworld.com...] you may have tied yourself up into some unnecessary knots.

[anand84]

Is there a way to selectively deindex certain sections (like the sidebar) of the page from Google. Google does provide a way for users to indicate sections of a page that the system must use to provide contextual ads.

If something similar was available for users to point Google bot to the main area of the page, then we may be able to find a compromise between users and Google.

[tedster]

Is there a way to selectively deindex certain sections (like the sidebar) of the page from Google

No, although the idea has been mentioned several times over the years.

There is such a mechanism available for Adsense topic extraction, and for the Google Search Appliance. But in organic search, I've heard that there would be too much potential for abuse and so Google does not at present offer such a function.