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I see this strangely formatted image URLs on websites time and again - is this an issue - I imagine it isn't best practice but does it make any difference to SEO?

Thanks in advance, Luke

Hello all,

I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example.

Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?

Hello,

I am looking at a site on which they haven't 301'd http to https, so each URL is there whether you have http or https at the beginning.

Why would a site owner not 301 to https? Is there any logical reason not to use 301?

This particular website is simply using a canonical tag to point to the https version of each URL.

I was wondering how old the 404 data from Google Search Console actually is? Does anyone know over what kind of timespan their site 404s data is compiled over?

How long do the 404s tend to take to disappear from the Google Search Console, once they are fixed?

Thanks Logan - much appreciated, as ever - that really helps - if I was to add another * to **Allow: /?resultspage= > so **Allow: /?*resultspage= - what would happen then? ****

Thanks Logan - much appreciated - the aim would be to prevent bots crawling any parameter'd URL but only in the products section, and not all of them - see below.

I noticed the shirt URLs can be produce many pages of results - e.g. if you look for a type of shirt you can get up to 20 pages of results - the resulting URLs also feature a ?

So you end up with - for example - /shirts/?resultspage=01 and then /shirts/?resultspage=02 or shirts/navy/?resultspage=01 and /shirts/navy/?resultspage=02 - and so on - and it would be good to index them somehow. So I wonder how I can override disallow parameters robots.txt instruction only for specific paths and even individual pages?

I suppose the nub of the disagreement is this: would Disallow: /shirts/?* block /shirts/?minprice=10&maxprice=20 and also block URLS further down the URL directory structure - e.g. /shirts/mens/navyblue/?minprice=10&maxprice=20 ?

Thanks Logan -  the lead website developer was assuming that this wildcard: Disallow: /shirts/?* would block URLs including a ? within this directory, and all the subdirectories of this directory that included a “?”

If I amended the URL to 
/shirts/?minprice=10&maxprice=20 would robots.txt work as intended right there?

and would that robots.txt work as intended further down the directory structure of the URLs? E.g.
/shirts**/golden/**?minprice=10&maxprice=20

Thanks for your feedback Kristina - I ended up rediscovering addshoppers in this instance, which I think I first discovered via Moz quite a while back

Hi – the lead website developer was assuming that this wildcard: Disallow: /shirts/?* would block URLs including a ? within this directory, and all the subdirectories of this directory that included a “?”

The second developer suggested that this wildcard would only block URLs featuring a ? that come immediately after /shirts/ - for example: /shirts?minprice=10&maxprice=20 BUT argued that this robots.txt directive would not block URLS featuring a ? in sub directories - e.g. /shirts/blue?mprice=100&maxp=20

So which of the developers is correct?

Beyond that, I assumed that the ? should feature a * on each side of it – for example - /? - to work as intended above? Am I correct in assuming that?

I used to enjoy MozPerks before it was "sunsetted" - even though it isn't running anymore, would it be possible to have a list of the companies who participated - some were way off my radar and very relevant to specific campaigns. Perhaps Moz should simply list an unendorsed list of 3rd party tools that may be useful to members? I for one would find such a list incredibly useful.

Thanks Steve and Andy - very helpful indeed

Hi - I'm looking at a site using JavaScript dropdown navigation - Google can crawl the whole site but my thinking is this - If I ensure the dropdown navigation is functioning fully when JS is switched off, I may facilitate the search engine bots?

At the moment I can't get any dropdown effect if I turn JS off on the site but if I look at a cached page (text version) the dropdown links are visible and working.

I am wondering whether any crawl benefit is there if you take this a step further and ensure the drop downs are actually visible and working when JS is switched off?

I would welcome your thoughts on this.

Thanks in advance, Luke - 07966 729775

I've been having endless conversations about this over the last few days and in conclusion I agree with everything you say - thanks for your excellent advice. On this particular site next/prev was not set up correctly, so I'm working on that right now.

Yes I agree totally - some wise words of caution - thanks.

thanks for the feedback - it is Umbraco.

What's your experience of using robots meta tag v robots.txt when it comes to a stand alone solution to prevent Google indexing?

I am pretty sure robots meta tag is more reliable - going on own experiences, I have never experience any probs with robots meta tags but plenty with robots.txt as a stand alone solution.

Thanks in advance, Luke

Hello Mozzers - I am looking at a site that deals with URLs that generate parameters (sadly unavoidable in the case of this website, with the resource they have available - none for redevelopment) - they deal with the URLs that include parameters with *robots.txt - e.g. Disallow: /red-wines/? **

Beyond that, they userel=canonical on every PAGINATED parameter page[such as https://wine****.com/red-wines/?region=rhone&minprice=10&pIndex=2] in search results.**

I have never used this method on paginated "product results" pages - Surely this is the incorrect use of canonical because these parameter pages are not simply duplicates of the main /red-wines/ page? - perhaps they are using it in case the robots.txt directive isn't followed, as sometimes it isn't - to guard against the indexing of some of the parameter pages???

I note that Rand Fishkin has commented: "“a rel=canonical directive on paginated results pointing back to the top page in an attempt to flow link juice to that URL, because “you'll either misdirect the engines into thinking you have only a single page of results or convince them that your directives aren't worth following (as they find clearly unique content on those pages).” **- yet I see this time again on ecommerce sites, on paginated result - any idea why? **

Now the way I'd deal with this is:

Meta robots tags on the parameter pages I don't want indexing (nofollow, noindex - this is not duplicate content so I would nofollow but perhaps I should follow?) 
Use rel="next" and rel="prev" links on paginated pages - that should be enough.

Look forward to feedback and thanks in advance, Luke

Ignore.

Thanks Logan for your help with this - much appreciated. Really helpful!