Do users read URLs anymore?

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21

So many options!! (:

Let’s say that I was concerned about different sorting combinations watering down my SEO.

While I understand how Slide #30 is saying that rel=“canonical” can hurt if not used properly, a few slides later on Slide #33 Google talks about something I have been wondering about all week.

See what you think about this hypothetical scenario…

I have two Sorting Groups…

Group 1: By-Date (Newest-to-Oldest)


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1
www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=2
www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=3

Group 2: By-Title (A-to-Z)


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=1
www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=2
www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=3

Suppose that Group 1 is the default, and so that is where I want Google to place most of the “indexing weight”. But as mentioned in Slide #30, you want to be careful not to nix page 2 and 3 by using rel=“canonical” improperly.

However, let’s say I did what Slide #33 mentions…

Group #1: By-Date (Newest-to-Oldest) (**Preferred Group)

www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1


<link rel="next"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=2" />

www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=2


<link rel="prev"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1" />
<link rel="next"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=3" />

www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=3


<link rel="prev"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=2" />

Group #2:

www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=1


<link rel="canonical"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1" />

<link rel="next"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=2" />

www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=2


<link rel="canonical"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=2" />

<link rel="prev"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=1" />
<link rel="next"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=3" />

www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=3


<link rel="canonical"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=3" />

<link rel="prev"  href="www.debbie.com/finance/markets/yellen-to-keep-rates-low?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=2" />

Based on my understanding of Google’s presentation - along with other materials - the end results should be…

1.) Google “clusters” Page 1, Page 2, and Page 3 together for each respective Group.

2.) Google treats sorting By-Date (Newest-to-Oldest) in Group #1 as the dominant group and thus gives it indexing priority or even exclusivity.

3.) As you add more ways to sort - or possibly even filter - using such a strategy should help Google to index the “default view” and it not ending up with 50 permutations of your web page!! (If this strategy seems correct, it would be very powerful for an e-commerce site!!)

How does all of that sound?!

Sincerely,

Debbie

P.S. At this point I think I have been re-convinced to have a full Query String like ?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1.

Yeah, it isn’t the prettiest of things, but Google will like it better than other approaches, and to @Jeff_Mott ; last point, it is bookmarkable, and thus more human-friendly! :slight_smile:

P.P.S. I think this may have been what @DaveMaxwell ; was alluding to in Post #14 above?! :slight_smile:

22

As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I had in mind when I wrote, “If you wanted to get super tricky, you could have Google index only one of the many possible sort orders.” :slight_smile:

23

Glad I read your mind! :slight_smile:

So, thanks to everyone’s help - and especially yours - I think I have this problem pretty well whipped, but there is one last area that I am unsure of…

Because all of my sorting and pagination are in the Query String and are intended to “restrict” what is returned, then things should work if you completely remove the Query String, right?

So, if I person were here…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/?sortname=by-title&sortdir=asc&page=3

…and they deleted out the Query String, they would be left with…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/

As it stands now, my PHP is designed to insert default values in for all of the Sort and Pagination parameters, so the user would see results displayed for this…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1

…however the URL would only show…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/

(**NOTE: For my Subsection landing page, I do NOT want to return all Article Summaries, because that could be in the hundreds or thousands, so even without a Query String, users should just see things sorting by date, newest first, and the default number of items per page.)

Follow me so far??

My question is, "Does taking such an approach go against everything we just worked on as described in Post #21 ??

Put another way…

If the format of all my URL’s looks like this…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1

…but then I have one “clean” version which looks like this…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/

1.) How should I code the rel’s (i.e. prev/next/canonical) for the “clean URL” page, as well as the other pages with Query Strings in them?

2.) Would Google get confused between the “Clean URL” and the “Paginated Series URLs”?

3.) Would Google nail me for duplicate content because it doesn’t understand the relationship between the “clean URL” and the remaining URL’s with a Query String?

4.) Would I just be better to ditch the “clean URL” and default to this one…


www.debbie.com/finance/markets/?sortname=by-date&sortdir=desc&page=1

Whew!!

Hope all of that makes sense?! (:

(It may seem a little neurotic, but it’s the little details like this that make all of the difference!!)

Sincerely,

Debbie