Text Only Version

Will the SE's see it as duplicate content?

[tobstar]

I have been looking at creating a text version on one our larger sites. This is mainly for userability for partially sighted users who use text readers to surf.

Will the SE's see this as duplicate content? Would the text based site prove to be great spider food and therefore help my listings?

[takagi]

Basically it is duplicate content. So if it would cause problems (only one of the pages is indexed), put this:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">

in the header of the page you don't want to be indexed. That is exactly what is done with the the page that is shown when you click on the 'printer friendlier' link at the bottom of each thread at WebmasterWorld.

[tobstar]

OK cheers thats what I was hoping someone would say.

[trismegisto]

Hi tobstar.

takagi gave you the solution, however, you may want to make a relationship between your documents. Use the link tag in the head of your first document like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" media="aural" href="/your/path.html">

In that way, different user agents (and search engines) will know that both documents are different versions of the same information.

Hope it helps.