1- The random testimonial forces Googlebot to think my pages changed
significantly, so that makes Googlebot reindex/reconsider my pages
constantly which takes time, so in the process I am loosing traffic
while it does that.
2- The random testimonial make Googlebot thinks that my pages are more
"alive" and therefore they are not "old" pages, so they don't expire
in the Google index because of age. Googlebot thinks they are more
"current", so they get more traffic.
3- The random testimonial doesn't have any effect, either positive or
negative.
So alltogether I'd say that you have a very google-unfriendly site-
and the random testimonials is realtively small issue compared with
others, that potentially can cause serious indexing, ranking problems.
> 1- The random testimonial forces Googlebot to think my pages changed
> significantly, so that makes Googlebot reindex/reconsider my pages
> constantly which takes time, so in the process I am loosing traffic
> while it does that.
> 2- The random testimonial make Googlebot thinks that my pages are more
> "alive" and therefore they are not "old" pages, so they don't expire
> in the Google index because of age. Googlebot thinks they are more
> "current", so they get more traffic.
> 3- The random testimonial doesn't have any effect, either positive or
> negative.
I agree with BBdeath's comments -- the use of random testimonials most
likely won't make or break your site. The only thing it will affect is
how search engines might be able to recognize duplicate content within
your site (if they see two URLs that could be treated as a single one
-- but since there is random content, they can't tell that they're the
same). In the end, this potential issue (which you could avoid by
making sure that you do not have duplication through URLs) is minor
compared to some other issues with your site.
I would recommend using Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar,
turning off JavaScript and images and then trying to use your site --
also without using any forms. This should be possible if you wish to
have search engines crawl and index your site properly. At the moment,
it seems pretty hard (or impossible) to do :).
Thanks a lot for the responses.
I don't have any duplicate content. All the pages show different
products. The issue I was asking about is the random testimonial. I'm
showing the testimonial randomly just because I dont want my visitors
to see the same testimonial all the time, given that I have more than
5000. In fact, my concern is that this random testimonial might make
Googlebot think that the page has changed, and therefore to visit/
retrieve/analize it again and again, which I guess takes time and in
that mean time the page could be taken off the Google results for a
while. I don't want that to happen.
> I agree with BBdeath's comments -- the use of random testimonials most
> likely won't make or break your site. The only thing it will affect is
> how search engines might be able to recognize duplicate content within
> your site (if they see two URLs that could be treated as a single one
> -- but since there is random content, they can't tell that they're the
> same). In the end, this potential issue (which you could avoid by
> making sure that you do not have duplication through URLs) is minor
> compared to some other issues with your site.
> I would recommend using Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar,
> turning off JavaScript and images and then trying to use your site --
> also without using any forms. This should be possible if you wish to
> have search engines crawl and index your site properly. At the moment,
> it seems pretty hard (or impossible) to do :).
Otherwise it's up to you but I'd surely take it a little bit more
seriously at least when a Googler (JohnMu) says that there are major
issues that can cause crawling, ranking problems.
> Thanks a lot for the responses.
> I don't have any duplicate content. All the pages show different
> products. The issue I was asking about is the random testimonial. I'm
> showing the testimonial randomly just because I dont want my visitors
> to see the same testimonial all the time, given that I have more than
> 5000. In fact, my concern is that this random testimonial might make
> Googlebot think that the page has changed, and therefore to visit/
> retrieve/analize it again and again, which I guess takes time and in
> that mean time the page could be taken off the Google results for a
> while. I don't want that to happen.
> On Nov 23, 3:41 pm, JohnMu wrote:
> > Hi Brian and welcome to the groups!
> > I agree with BBdeath's comments -- the use of random testimonials most
> > likely won't make or break your site. The only thing it will affect is
> > how search engines might be able to recognize duplicate content within
> > your site (if they see two URLs that could be treated as a single one
> > -- but since there is random content, they can't tell that they're the
> > same). In the end, this potential issue (which you could avoid by
> > making sure that you do not have duplication through URLs) is minor
> > compared to some other issues with your site.
> > I would recommend using Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar,
> > turning off JavaScript and images and then trying to use your site --
> > also without using any forms. This should be possible if you wish to
> > have search engines crawl and index your site properly. At the moment,
> > it seems pretty hard (or impossible) to do :).
Well, you are right indeed now that I think about your example. But it
is not on purpouse, and in fact I don't get any advantage with that.
- http://www.manualsparadise.com/AboutOurStore.do: Is the page I want
to act as home page
- http://www.manualsparadise.com: forwards to the other page, because
I decided the other page to be the first one
- the https versions: I decided to take the visitors to the SSL
protocol because of some technical issues regarding my programming
framework (Java/Struts) and the fact that I have some pages that need
to work under SSL. I decided to take the visitor to SSL asap, instead
of doing it just when using the payment and registration pages, it was
hard to do that because the sessions were invalidated. A long story...
In fact, not only I didn't intend to make duplicated content, but
actually I don't need any traffic exactly to the home page directly.
> Otherwise it's up to you but I'd surely take it a little bit more
> seriously at least when a Googler (JohnMu) says that there are major
> issues that can cause crawling, ranking problems.
> On Nov 23, 11:17 pm, Brian Braun wrote:
> > Hi John, Phil and BBDeath,
> > Thanks a lot for the responses.
> > I don't have any duplicate content. All the pages show different
> > products. The issue I was asking about is the random testimonial. I'm
> > showing the testimonial randomly just because I dont want my visitors
> > to see the same testimonial all the time, given that I have more than
> > 5000. In fact, my concern is that this random testimonial might make
> > Googlebot think that the page has changed, and therefore to visit/
> > retrieve/analize it again and again, which I guess takes time and in
> > that mean time the page could be taken off the Google results for a
> > while. I don't want that to happen.
> > On Nov 23, 3:41 pm, JohnMu wrote:
> > > Hi Brian and welcome to the groups!
> > > I agree with BBdeath's comments -- the use of random testimonials most
> > > likely won't make or break your site. The only thing it will affect is
> > > how search engines might be able to recognize duplicate content within
> > > your site (if they see two URLs that could be treated as a single one
> > > -- but since there is random content, they can't tell that they're the
> > > same). In the end, this potential issue (which you could avoid by
> > > making sure that you do not have duplication through URLs) is minor
> > > compared to some other issues with your site.
> > > I would recommend using Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar,
> > > turning off JavaScript and images and then trying to use your site --
> > > also without using any forms. This should be possible if you wish to
> > > have search engines crawl and index your site properly. At the moment,
> > > it seems pretty hard (or impossible) to do :).
On Nov 23, 6:17 pm, Brian Braun wrote:
In fact, my concern is that this random testimonial might make
> Googlebot think that the page has changed, and therefore to visit/
> retrieve/analize it again and again, which I guess takes time and in
> that mean time the page could be taken off the Google results for a
> while. I don't want that to happen.
Why do you think that Google would remove you from results while it
recrawls your site/page? Can't it just leave your last-indexed page up
in the results while it crawls your "updated" page? It doesn't have to
take one down, then recrawl for awhile, then put the new on up... to
my knowledge.
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