Is having two sets of page navigation a problem?

[Marshall]

I have an e-commerce site that has two sets of navigation: one horizontal drop down menu below the header, and one "traditional" vertical slide-out on the left side of the page.

The top navigation provides the user the option to search by category, the left by manufacturer. Both contain identically worded links.

Example:
Top Navigation break down - Small Widgets | Medium Widgets | Large Widgets | Specialty Widgets - and from there the manufacturer are listed on the drop down menu.

Left Navigation break down -
Manufacturer A
Manufacturer B
Manufacturer C
etc... -
and from there the slide-out menu for each
Small Widgets
Medium Widgets
Large Widgets
Specialty Widgets

The purpose of the two is to make it easier on the customer to navigate the site, not to spam search engines. However, after reading all the posts about Panda and Penguin plus Google's blog on things, I am concerned this may not been seen by Google for what it is: a convenience for the user.

Based on SERPs in Bing, I think there is not a problem, but looking at Google SERPs, I am not so sure. And for what it is worth, WMT shows an evenly distributed click average between the top and left navigation leading me to believe it is doing for the visitor what is designed to do. On the flip side though, if the site is not ranking well, the best navigation design is not going to make a difference.

Thoughts?

Marshall

[tedster]

I can't see this being a problem - but I also can't help but wonder why you ask/ Did your Google Search traffic fall off significantly?

[Marshall]

A lot of pages dropped from page one of the SERPS to 3, or in some cases, 30 or higher. This dual navigation has been in place for a long time. There are also no warning notices from Google. Maybe I am the proverbial drowning man reaching for a straw, but I have also noticed that a lot of sites linked to this one, sites that say where you can buy these products, are ranking higher even though they do not sell the products.

Marshall

[tedster]

Maybe the query terms you are targeting have been re-classified by Google and are now "mixed" rather than purely transactional.

[Marshall]

Don't know. I just know the drop happened after Penguin.

Marshall

[Zivush]

I have very similar type of navigation for a content website.

Top Navigation: for 4 site's sections, without any drop down menu.
Left navigation: for major categories (per each section).

Also, because the articles are so long, I've added lately the top navigation menu at the bottom ..

Actually, after penguin, the sites gained ~20% visitors (some thousands).
So, may it suggest that the problem is somewhere else?

[tedster]

One thing you might do if you have concern here is install some analytics tracking to see which navigation your visitors actually make use of, and in what proportions. I've worked with sites that cut their main navigation links by 70% after doing something in that direction.

[Zivush]

install some analytics tracking to see which navigation your visitors actually make use of

For that, there's a content drill-down on Google analytics.

[Marshall]

tedster,

According to analytics, the navigation use is evenly split between the top and side. I have been monitoring it and am actually surprised how even it is. Their report supports the reason it is set up that way in the first place: some people know the type of product they want but not who manufacturers it, while others are familiar with the manufacturers listed on the side and are looking for their specific product line.

So, may it suggest that the problem is somewhere else?

I thought of that and studied the pages in and out along with referencing anything WMT had to say which, aside from reporting duplicate title and description tags, it is not reporting any issues.

The duplicate title and description tag issue is a result of variables in the url of the product. Since a product may be listed under itself, or small, or say blue, etc, urls may read prod=1234 or prod=1234&cat=2. Last night I set WMT not to index urls with cat so to avoid the duplication. Beyond that, I am not seeing any problems. And I assure you there are no black hat tricks being used on the site, in case you were wondering.

I am considering adding a dynamic canonical link in the product page to alert SE's to only use the urls without the &cat=.... variables to augment setting the parameters in WMT.

Marshall

[g1smd]

Certainly, the rel="canonical" data can help. That's a good first step.

There is rarely a need for the category details to appear in the URL for a product. Long term, I would change the URLs in your links to discard the exta parameter (and don't forget to redirect requests for all of the old URLs to the new format).

When you load the product page change the script so that is first asks the database what categories the current product is in, and list those in a box on the right of the page. "Browse more... _widgets _blue_widgets _special_offers". Now the user has some really useful navigation choices, and you don't have to keep track of "which category does the user think they are in having arrived here".

You also eliminate the problem where under the old system the user arrives from the SERPs to the page at example.com?id=4323&cat=specialoffers but would have been better off arriving at example.com?id=4323&cat=77 because that version of the page has a prominent direct link back to category 77 which contains the rest of the Acme Corp. widgets, including the one the user is looking to buy.

[Planet13]

+1 g1smd

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I've done a lot of testing, for years, on navigational impact on serps. My conclusion is that if Google knows it's navigation it's not a problem. I even have documented proof that having no navigation at all will not impact your rankings directly.

I think you can add navigation to the list of 'can do no wrong' because Google has neutered it as a possible way of being gamed. I also have evidence that Google no longer looks at position on page as a way of detecting navigation, it will spot it anywhere on the page and even within the content.

Navigation no longer has a direct SEO impact, imo, but it will of course please visitors which is a good thing.

[Marshall]

g1smd,

Strangely, or not, I am not seeing the extended urls with the cat variable in SERPs, only in WMT in regards to what I said before. Regardless, I added the canonical link last night after logging off from here, so I guess I will see what happens.

Marshall

[g1smd]

When Google realises that two different URLs deliver the same page of content, they generally pick the shortest or the one with the least number of parameters to list in the SERPs.

They occasionally list a longer URL and that decision might be guided the number of links to that version (or some other factor) taking precedence.