Comment pages given more weight than main article page

[ezeevivek]

Hi Friends,

I have a petition site where people submit online petitions and can sign petitions. So my site has one main petition page with 30 latest signatures on same page, rest of signatures are available with pager (1, 2, 3, 4 etc).

The problem is when I search any keyword based on petitions in Google, my pager signature pages comes in SERPs but not the main petition page. Where as complete info is present on main page, so it should be given more weightage than subsequent pages.

All pages share same title, description, keyword meta tag except title has been appened with (Page 1) , (Page 2) etc, also signature (pager) pages contain a short para of main petition with read more link on it.

(If moderator allow, then I can share the site usls)

Thanks,

[phranque]

are you providing any link elements that specify link types such as "start" or "canonical"?
12.3 Document relationships: the LINK element:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#edef-LINK

does the url of the main petition page change when paging starts (after 31 signatures)?
does the "read more" link or any other links on the pager page(s) refer back to the main page?

[ezeevivek]

Yes I am using canonical as:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/petition-url-petition.html" />

"-petition.html" is added to work with rewrite urls.

Not using "start" element.

URL's are like:

Main Page:
example.com/petition-url-petition.html

Paging:
example.com/petition-url-petition-p2.html
example.com/petition-url-petition-p3.html
and so on...

And yes read more links refer back to main page.

[Planet13]

What exactly is the content on the paginated pages (the -p2.html, -p3,html, etc.,)?

Is it just the signers name and city of residence? And also the brief description (which is duplicated from the main page)?

My first thought is that I would no index those paginated pages, but I don't know enough about your site to say whether those pages might be considered "thin" by Panda or not.

Have you checked, double checked, and triple checked that you don't have any technical errors on the main petition pages?

But I would think about whether I really want google to index the pagination pages at all in the first place.

(If moderator allow, then I can share the site usls)

While you can't do that here, I think you can put it in your user profile.

[ezeevivek]

Paginated pages contains a short para of petition with title with read more link back to main page and signatures contain name & comment (mostly "I support this petition").

Indexing paginated pages bring more number and users on site, because sometmes signatures contain usefull info's.

There are no technical error on any page.

Is it possible to establish a relationship between main and subsequent pages by using any meta info of tags, like breadcrums?

[tedster]

<link rel="next"> and <link real="prev"> can help.

[Planet13]

@ tedster:

<link rel="next"> and <link real="prev"> can help.

I have to ask one thing tedster; if it were YOUR site, would you even make the paginated pages available for indexing? Or would you noindex them?

It seems that they just have a list of signatures as well as a BRIEF version of the petition description, which is a truncated version of the description that already appears on the main page (the page he is trying to rank).

[tedster]

It's a judgment call, specific to the situation. The report from eezevivek ia that "sometmes signatures contain usefull info's". If that's the case and the traffic they generate is useful to the site, I might. In most situations, no I don't want "search result type" pagination to be indexed.

However, the situation is certainly different for paginated articles, where I've gone to great lengths to get deep pages into the index. See [webmasterworld.com...] for details.

[edited by: tedster at 9:03 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2012]

[rlange]

Following on tedster's post about the next and previous relation, this might be useful: Pagination with rel="next" and rel="prev" [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

--
Ryan

[Planet13]

I think in this case then, if at all possible in terms of time and work involved, I would personally noindex the paginated pages, but look through them (or get email updates with the comments), and copy the good comments and put them on the main page.

(it won't be duplicate / think / useless content in google's mind if the other pages are noindexed, right?)

sort of like: This is what people are saying about this important cause, followed by comment highlights, on the main page under the description.

Might be too labor intensive depending on how many signatures and comments you get though...

Just a thought.

[phranque]

posted last week, Google's Maile Ohye examines the issues webmasters face with paginated content:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn8uXTWiGg [youtube.com]

[ezeevivek]

Thanks for replies .... so I have implemented next, prev but I dont see any logic for google giving more importance to signature pages rather than main petition page, because as per google they have their own intelligence to build relations in absense of rel tags.

[phranque]

it could be caused by people linking to the page with their own replies rather than the main petition page.

i would suggest you also add a link element reference to the main page from each of the "paginated pages":
<link rel="start" href="http://www.example.com/petition-url-petition.html" />