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Hi,

I'm aware Google doesn't care if you have helpful content you can hide/unhide by user interaction. I am also aware that Google frowns upon hiding content from the user for SEO purposes. We're not considering anything similar to this.

The issue is, we will be displaying only a part of our content to the user at a time.

We'll load 3 results on each page initially. These first 3 results are static, meaning on each initial page load/refresh, the same 3 results will display. However, we'll have a "Show Next 3" button which replaces the initial results with the next 3 results. This content will be preloaded in the source code so Google will know about it.

I feel like Google shouldn't have an issue with this since we're allowing the user action to cycle through all results. But I'm curious, is it an issue that the user action does NOT allow them to see all results on the page at once?

I am leaning towards no, this doesn't matter, but would like some input if possible. Thanks a lot!

The way our site is structured, it might pull the business data from one specific source. If we wrap our business NAP data in Schema, it might display that way on the category pages. As I linked above, Home Advisor uses Schema on category pages and I'm not sure why, so I thought I'd ask. It seems nobody is sure why.

1. Okay.

2. They're all using different things and getting different results. TripAdvisor uses RDFa, I believe, which doesn't exactly help me.

I guess I'll just have to play around with them and see which works best.

Thanks for the response, David. I think we'll just leave them off of our category pages entirely just to be sure. I'd noticed Yelp didn't mark them, but any idea why Home Advisor seems to do it? Maybe their code just automatically lists businesses with Schema throughout?

**Edit: **Is it okay because they've attached an itemprop="URL" link within the LocalBusiness tag on the business name, effectively attaching it to that URL only and separating it from the "category" page it's on?

Perhaps you can help with these more difficult questions (for me):

1. Do you have any idea about multiple reviewBody tags in the same main Review tag?

2. Is the itemReviewed tag necessary in the review markup or will the review being posted on the page of an already tagged business be enough? 2b. If it needs to be marked up, does it make the connection through Business Name only? 2c. I've seen the itemReviewed itemtype listed as .org/Thing as well. Does this make a difference?

Thanks again!

Miriam,

Thank you for your help and extra thanks for trying to solicit help from additional Mozzers. I seem to only run into difficult issues that nobody can answer one way or the other these days! Such is life in the cold, SEO world though, hehe.

David,

Thanks for the response!

"The best way to have this done effectively is to have multiple listings for businesses on one page, such as in a category, and then have those linked to an individual business page. On that individual business page you can then have organizational markup, review markup, and anything else that may be useful."

This is exactly how we're currently setup. Our individual business pages are good to go with proper markup (assuming the sample code I pasted for reviewBody is okay). I'm just curious about using markup on the "category" pages.

"I have never seen something that had multiple business organisation markup on one page and to be honest I'm not sure how Google would display that information if they would display it at all."

You can see an example on a very big site here. It doesn't display any of the business information in rich snippets, and they've avoided aggregate snippets (as would I since that definitely would confuse Google IMO), but it seems to be fine with the fact the businesses are all marked up.

I would assume that at the worst, Google ignores it for rich snippets and it doesn't have a negative consequence. And at best, it helps Google understand better that these businesses fit within the niche/keywords/content of the page itself. I'd love insight though since the "category" pages are ones we're interested in ranking for, mostly.

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for the response. I've read the article you linked before, but it actually deals with a single personal review on a page and not multiple reviews and aggregate ratings, both of which are my target.

The end result will be a few things:

1. A company profile page which lists their business information and hosts their user-submitted reviews. Our plan is to mark up the business information (no problem on this front), the aggregate data (no problem on this front), as well as the user reviews themselves (this is what I'm having questions about).

2. We'll also have category pages (not WordPress-esque category pages) that feature a few businesses at once. I'm curious how Google would handle each business wrapped in regular LocalBusiness code only (I'm aware ratings would confuse Google).

I'm hoping someone can provide insight on, A) The code I submitted above (the generators give off different code which Google's tool won't validate. My version validates, but I want to double check), B) Whether or not marking 3 different businesses with LocalBusiness SCHEMA on a single page is bad, and C) If we can utilize multiple reviewBody tags within the same review DIV.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the response, David.

1. We are using aggregate reviews for the overall business rating, yes. But we'll still need to markup the reviews on the page, correct? I was sure that if you have a reviewCount, you should mark up the reviews on the page as well.

2. Are there any negative consequences to properly marking up businesses on results/category pages? I've noticed many large review sites do this.

3. Well, I am asking because shouldn't it be obvious the reviews on the page are related to the page content, which has already been identified as LocalBusiness with a specific name?

I also already have it as span and it's still displaying.

Hi,

I have a few questions about our SCHEMA for user-submitted business reviews. Here's what I have so far:

User Review

Reviewer Name

Business Name
05/14/2014

5

1. Am I missing anything?

2. Is the itemReviewed tag necessary?

3. If a category/results page has multiple businesses listed and shows their ratings, is marking the businesses up as you would on their individual page okay? What about the ratings? I have a feeling marking the ratings would confuse Google, but the businesses themselves (NAP) should be alright, correct?

4. General Q: Is it alright to have multiple reviewBody tags within one review? For instance, if the review is split into 2 parts and additional code/content is between them that isn't part of the review, can we just add multiple reviewBody tags within the same main div tag?

Thanks!

Thanks again for the response, EGOL. It is appreciated.

Can you point to any examples of large-scale sites like this with better SEO for these pages? I mean, any site that targets every city, neighborhood, park, etc. with content like this should theoretically run into duplicate content and display thin result pages quite often.

And even so, these pages are helpful. I Google "restaurant + small cities near me" and Yelp pages come up, which benefit me.

Yelp is one of the biggest review sites on the web and their filtered search result pages are indexed and ranking ultra high all over the place. What are they doing so special?

This page and this page both offer nearly the same exact results, just shuffled a bit. Beyond simply being too big to get slapped, why is it okay when Yelp does this?

That's interesting. It seems to have been around for quite a while and ranks well. Of all the similar sites I've seen, Houzz seems to walk the thinnest line on bad-SEO though. Their filter creates nearly identical pages, all of which get indexed, and they have no canonicals for any of them and virtually the same on-page SEO as well. Not to mention the same blurbs across millions of pages, etc.

It's weird to me though that a reasonably targeted blurb is such bad business when the rest of the site is so helpful to users. One would think Google would allow it since the blurbs apply to each page and the "results" are the real meat and potatoes of the site.

EGOL,

I think you're making unfair assumptions about our site. Each page visible to Google will have helpful information and content on the site. The one's that don't will not be "published" for Google or our users.

I assure you, the site will be worthwhile and helpful to the end user, especially as time progresses. In fact, if you read above, I am asking specifically about adding additional helpful content to the user, but trying to avoid DC issues by posting it throughout each site.

I am not trying to shortcut anything, I'm curious why some sites are able to seemingly circumvent SEO tenets and was hoping for a helpful discussion.

And again, I'll reiterate, I am not interested in boilerplate content to shortcut anything. It would be in addition to existing useful content. The boilerplate content on similar pages would also be beneficial to the end user. Using the examples above, I believe the small blurbs above _can _be helpful to the user. Do you agree?

Thanks for the response.

The paragraph of helpful content is identical (beyond a city being swapped out) but it still helps their searches. If you tailor a search with one of their cities and a cousin keyword within the text, they pop-up on the front page usually. That's what I'm asking about. Why is Google ignoring this obvious DC?

I'm assuming the business listings are making the page unique enough to override the duplicate paragraph + the site is huge and has TONS of authority.

Howdy,

Ideally, uniqueness for every page's title, description, and content is desired. But when a site is very, very large, it becomes impossible. I don't believe our site can avoid boilerplate content for title tags or meta-descriptions. We will, however, markup the pages with proper microdata so Google can use this information as they please.

What I am curious about is boilerplate content repeated throughout the site for the purpose of helping the user, as well as to tell Google what the page is about (rankings).

For instance, this page and this page offer the same type of services, but in different areas. Both pages (and millions of others) offer the exact same paragraph on each page. The information is helpful to the user, but it's definitely duplicate content. All they've changed is the city name.

I'm curious, what's making this obvious duplicate content issue okay? The additional unique content throughout (in the form of different businesses), the small, yet obvious differences in on-site content (title tags clearly represent different locations), or just the fact that the site is HUGELY authorative and gets away with it?

I'm very curious to hear your opinions on this practice, potential ways to avoid it, and whether or not it's a passable practice for large, but new sites.

Thanks!

Jane/Martin,

Thanks for the responses. I just wanted to verify what I was thinking before making a move. I agree with both of your points and I'm going to try and persuade the coders to make this an actual pop-up from a single static page.

Thanks again!

Hi,

This is sort of a duplicate content issue, but not quite. I'm concerned with the way our code is written and whether or not it can cause problems in the future.

On many of our pages (thousands), our users will have the option to post comments. We have a link which opens a JavaScript pop-up with our comments guidelines. It's a 480 word document of original text, but it's preloaded in the source code of every page it appears on.

The content on these pages will be relatively thin immediately, and many will have thin content throughout. I'm afraid so many of our pages look the same in both code and on-site content that we'll have issues down the line.

Admittedly, I've never dealt with this issue before, so I'm curious. Is having a 480 word piece of text in the source code on so many pages an issue, or will Google consider it part of the template, similar to footer/sidebar/headers?

If it's an issue, we can easily make it an actual pop-up hosted on a SINGLE page, but I'm curious if it's a problem.

Thanks!

Thanks for the response. The issue of "hiding" the content with the randomization was a fear of mine. Believe me, I don't like the rotating content design, but it's where we're at right now.

3 search results, think specific businesses, but for user experience, only 3 will be shown at once. This is not something to be changed unfortunately. If more than 3 are in that specific business category, we'll be rotating them out (which I don't like) upon refresh.

The only solution I can think of is to have the top 3 remain static and allow the user to click a "Show more" button which loads them beneath (or replaces the original 3). Either way, Google shouldn't have an issue with that, correct?

I know there are "better" ways to accomplish what we're asking, but the site is custom built and nearly 95% complete. We are also taking a unique approach to the way we display results and serve them to our clients, so the most optimal way is not achievable at this point. It's basically finding the most optimal for what we can do, if that makes sense. Thanks for understanding!

Hi Gary,

Were you notified of my follow-up posts? I'd love to hear additional information from you.

Thanks a lot!

Hi Gary,

One thing you could try is loading all the matches on to a page and only show the top 3 matches with an option to reveal more and mark all the code up with a schema. This way the content will always be on the page and able to be crawled by Googlebot.

This is the idea I've been toying with. Do you have any idea if we could preload all matches/results and still use the refresh? It'd technically (I think) be different because the user can't load more on command, like with a button, but Google can see them.

I feel like it's a little iffy since Google seems to only approve of hidden text if the user controls when they see it or not. Any idea?

Thanks again!

Lesley,

Thanks for the response.

If we scripted the page so Google would ignore the content, I'm afraid we'd be in nearly the same boat we're in now. As in, we'd have no content on the page and wouldn't rank for anything.

While it would effectively "solve" the potential rotating content issues and penalties, we wouldn't have anythign to rank for.

Gary,

Thanks for the helpful response!

1. How would we run into internal duplicate content issues? These 3 results (in full) would only be found on this specific page, they'd just be rotating.

I will say that the way these results pages are structured includes snippets of content that can be found on each results individual page, e.g., a snippet of Frankenstein's plot will show on the results page, and once clicked, will show the full entry. So there's going to be some duplicate content. That shouldn't be a huge deal though?

2. That's exactly the reason I hate this. Even if Google didn't get pissed, we wouldn't have static content (keywords, longtails) to build authority and rank for.

Idea #1: I actually have this prinicple written down, but slightly different. If we had a link at the bottom of the results in Javascript to "shuffle" or "refresh" the content, the user would get the benefit, but since it's not a new page, Google couldn't crawl it. So they'd only randomize on command, but stick with the initial 3 on pageload.

I was also toying with the idea of locking 2 of the results and only shuffling the 3rd, that way there's some semblance of continuity to the indexing and we'd always be working towards that content ranking. Thoughts?

Are you saying with SCHEMA we can "hide" the additional/rotated results initially to the user, but Google sees it immediately? If so, please elaborate or send me a link since this is interesting!

Idea #2: The snippets actually lead/link to their static pages on their own URL (this is the only duplicate content I believe) so that's fine, but yes, we aren't concerned with the static pages ranking, only the grouped together results.

Hi there,

I apologize if I'm too vague, but this is a tough issue describe without divulging too much of our project.

I'm working on a new project which will provide information results in sets of 3. Let's say someone wants to find 3 books that match their criteria, either through their organic search which leads them to us, or through their internal search on our site.

For instance, if they're looking for classic movies involving monsters, we might display Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy. We'd list unique descriptions about the movies and include lots of other useful information.

However, there are obviously many more monster movies than those 3, so when a user refreshes the page or accesses it again, a different set of results show up. For this example, assume we have 5 results to choose from. So it's likely Google will index different results shuffled around.

I'm worried about this causing problems down the line with ranking. The meat and potatoes of the page content are the descriptions and information on the movies. If these are constantly changing, I'm afraid the page will look "unstable" to Google since we have no real static content beyond a header and title tag.

Can anyone offer any insight to this?

Thanks!