SEO issues? New functionality added to website and now hash (in URL) - fragments

[RetailClicks]

Hi All!

We have new nice functionality on website, but now i doubt if we will have SEO issues. Duplicate content and if google is able to spider our website.

See: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html#608=1370
With the new functionality we can switch between colors of the models (black / white / red / yellow).
When you switch with Ajax the content of other models is fetched without refreshing the page. (so the url initial part of url stays the same (for initial model) only part behind # changes.

The other models are also accessible by there own url, like the red one: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-rosso.html#608=1372

So far so good.

But now the questions:

1. We use to have url like /boretti-da-vinci-nero.html - also our canonical is that way

But now if we access that url our system is adding automatically the #123-123 to the url to indicate which model(color) is shown. Is this hurting SEO or confusing google? Because it seems that the clean url is not accessible anymore? (it adds now #123-123)

2. Should we add some tags around the different types (colors) to prevent google from indexing that part of website?

Every info would be very helpfull! We do not want to lose our nice rankings thanks to MOZ!

Thanks all!
Jeroen

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Joroen,

Are you able to normalise the canonical element to point back to the non-hashed URL? I haven't actually worked on anything quite like this myself, so have no live data to share with you.

Google used to ignore what was after the hashtag (unless you used a hash bang #!), but you will now see anchors being indexed, so this may have some bearing on how it is actioned.

-Andy

[mememax]

Hey Jeroen,

If I were you I would play with canonicals in order to not confuse google.

For example: this url http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html is for the black version, but then if you navigate the page and you go to http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html#608=1373&swatch_id=750 you should point to the correct URL which is http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-colora.html.

In the last url you also have a bad canonical as even if here http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html#608=1373&swatch_id=750 you're showing the colora model you're canonicalizing to the nero model. You should fix that.

About duplication this is your last problem as google doesn't index different portions of the same page and using the # you're telling google that those are internal anchors and not different pages.

I hope this makes sense.

E.

[EGOL]

We had a problem like this starting a couple months ago.  We installed Google Custom Search on a site with the results to be displayed on the same page.  Now when you visit any page with the search box a hash and a few rubbish characters follow the URL.

So far, no ranking problems have been seen and no errors are showing in webmaster tools.

Andy's suggestion of rel=canonical is a good one.  We should do that on our sites.

[RetailClicks]

Hi All, Thanks for the updates.

We solved the issue by only add # to the url when changing from color. So initial load of the product is the clean url.

Guess that is all we need to do to don't get penaltilized by Google.