Similar URLs

[graemeblake]

I'm making a site of LSAT explanations. The content is very meaningful for LSAT students. I'm less sure the urls and headings are meaningful for Google.

I'll give you an example. Here are two URLs and heading for two separate pages:

• http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-69/logical-reasoning-1/q-10/   - LSAT 69, Logical Reasoning I, Q 10
• http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-69/logical-reasoning-2/q10/  - LSAT 69, Logical Reasoning II, Q10

There are two logical reasoning sections on LSAT 69. For the first url is for question 10 from section 1, the second URL is for question 10 from the second LR section.

I noticed that google.com only displays 23 urls when I search "site:http://lsathacks.com". A couple of days ago it displayed over 120 (i.e. the entire site).

1. Am I hurting myself with this structure, even if it makes sense for users?

2. What could I do to avoid it? I'll eventually have thousands of pages of explanations. They'll all be very similar in terms of how I would categorize them to a human, e.g. "LSAT 52, logic games question 12"

I should note that the content of each page is very different. But url, title and h1 is similar.

Edit: I could, for example, add a random keyword to differentiate titles and urls (but not H1). For example:

http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-69/logical-reasoning-2/q10-car-efficiency/

LSAT 69, Logical Reasoning I, Q 10, Car efficiency

But the url is already fairly long as is. Would that be a good idea?

[Chris.Menke]

Graeme,

Things are just working themselves out as far as indexation.  You'll notice that all your pages are showing in the index if you use google's search tools/date feature and search for results from the past month or year:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:lsathacks.com&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:m&sa=X&ei=gNflUanGCLLG4APonYCYAg&ved=0CB0QpwUoBDg8&biw=1920&bih=993

New sites can take a month or two before showing consistent site:domain searches.  BTW, you can leave off the "http://" part of your site:domian search.

[graemeblake]

Thanks! That's a big relief.

Do you think the URL structure is ok as is? Anything I could do to differentiate them for google would, I think, make the site a bit worse for humans.

I do plan to differentiate the title tags more, as soon as I figure out how to make custom h1 tags on Wordpress.

[Chris.Menke]

Those URLs won't inhibit your indexation or your rankings.

[graemeblake]

Hope you don't mind me following up again. Search results by past month or year now show nothing, or just one link. If I do a straight site search, I just see four urls.

Is this normal search index behavior at this point, or is there any action I should take? Thanks.

I was also wondering if, based on my current setup, Google will eventually get skilled enough to distinguish results by small differences like "LSAT 68 game 2" vs "LSAT 65 game 2".

[Chris.Menke]

This would be normal behavior for a brand new site--things will shuffle around for a good while and yes, even single-character difference in the URLs is enough differentiation.