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Just looking at an ecommerce website and they've hidden their product page's duplicate content behind tabs on the product pages - not on purpose, I might add.

Is this a legitimate way to hide duplicate content, now that Google has lowered the importance and crawlability of content hidden behind tabs? Is this a legitimate tactic to tackle duplicate content?

Your thoughts would be welcome. Thanks, Luke

I just ran a robots.txt file through "Google robots.txt Tester" as there was some unusual syntax in the file that didn't make any sense to me...

e.g. /url/?*    
/url/?
/url/*

and so on. I would use ? and not ? for example and what is ? for! - etc.

Yet "Google robots.txt Tester" did not highlight the issues...

I then fed the sitemap through http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/robots-text-tester/robots-checker.php and that tool actually picked up my concerns.

Can anybody explain why Google didn't - or perhaps it isn't supposed to pick up such errors?

Thanks, Luke

Thanks Angular Marketing, and Everett... very helpful feedback and much appreciated. Luke

Thanks everyone for your helpful feedback - much appreciated.

Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location

Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
(a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml 
http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml 
and so on...

OR this kind of approach - 
(b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and 
http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml

I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option?

Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml

Look forward to reading your comments - Luke

I am looking at a website and have noticed that there are lots of photos living on different domain - so I imagine they're coming through from another website - e.g. the domain I'm looking at is www.chocolatecakeszoopla.com - the images on that domain name feature the third-party website's url - e.g.: www.chocolatecakestockimages.com/chocolatecakeicing.jpg - is this anything to worry about?

I was imagining the pics would feature the same URL as the rest of the website - that would be more logical? Would it be better practice to amend image names to feature the URL of the site they appear on, or doesn't this really matter?

Thanks, Luke

Hi everyone

I've just been looking at a few https websites and noticed the http urls weren't redirecting to their https equivalents - why would a website owner not bother redirecting?

As an example: http://www.marksandspencer.com

I look forward to your feedback. L

Many thanks Eric - much appreciated - that clarifies everything perfectly

Hello Mozzers,

I am looking at a website with the homepage repeated several times (4 times) on the sitemap (sitemap is autogenerated via a plugin) - is this an SEO problem do you think - might it damage SEO performance, or can I ignore this issue?

I am thinking I can ignore, yet it's an odd "issue" so your advice would be welcome!

Thanks, Luke

Thanks Miriam - that makes good sense - many thanks for your feedback Luke

Hi Miriam and I'm very grateful for your input, as ever.

Here's some clarification:

One business is a cookery school offering educational services - the other business is a restaurant open to the public, run by the students of the cookery school (both are owned by the same company).

The company in question has been using the same address for both - 24-27 Castle Mews - t**he business names and phone numbers are different. **

So all seems OK at the moment. I could keep their shared address as it is, which is accurate.

However, it is also clear that each business actually has a distinct address within Castle Mews, so if I wish to differentiate/split the addresses, so each business has a distinct address, I can:

The restaurant is at 24-26 Castle Mews - the cookery school is at 27 Castle Mews, so does it make sense to split the addresses along these lines, or doesn't it really matter?

Look forward to hearing from you, Luke

Might a solution be to <no follow="">the link to the global site in all instances - perhaps the safest option? That's what I would fo - the first thing that came into my mind... any other SEO feedback on this would be good -  Luke</no>

PS1. I would be tempted to avoid any kind of keyword targeting - even if nofollow
PS2. This is interesting - a different situation but hey: http://www.thesempost.com/design-websites-follow-designed-footer-links/

Ah, so varying all elements - the Name, Address and Phone number - that seems logical - thanks for your feedback.

Hi Mozzers - I'm working with 2 businesses at the moment, at the same address - the only difference between the two is the phone number.

I could ask to split the business addresses apart, so that NAP(name, address, phone number) is different for each businesses (only the postcode will be the same).

Or simply carry on at the moment, with the N and Ps different, yet with the As the same - the same addresses for both businesses.

I've never experienced this issue before, so I'd value your input.

Many thanks, Luke

I know - nearly fell of my chair in shock ha! Thanks for the links Luke

I have found this useful in the past: https://www.ayima.com/guides/conquering-pagination-guide.html

Hi Matt - yes, trying not to upset the web dev by posting link (though can do privately if needed)! The CMS is Drupal and is hand-coded in, it seems (and there lies the problem) - every day, month, week you can think of is creating a unique URL, which isn't very helpful - most of the days, months, weeks into the future are blank - you just get a box on the page with, say, March 2017 - and nothing else. I was thinking noindex may be a quick solution (best solution would be to remove the calendar) - though not sure whether that will protect me from all issues - do I really want crawlers heading through hundreds/thousands of empty pages - perhaps I should noindex, nofollow?

Hi Dmitrii - the tweets are copied onto multiple pages within the website - when one page is full another page is created - for all the tweets from the company's twitter account - I have advised them to stop doing this now - it seem like bad practice in terms of web development anyway.

These tweets that are copied onto multiple pages are only used to display the company's latest 3 tweets, anyway, which are shown in a tweet feed in the homepage footer.

Just noticed a web developer I work with has been copying tweets into the website - and these are displayed (and saved) one page at a time across hundreds of pages (this is so they can populate a twitter feed, I am told). How would you tackle this, now that the deed's been done? This is in Drupal. Your thoughts would be welcome as this is a new one to me.

Thanks, Luke

Hi guys - I have just stumbled across an onsite calendar that's throwing out hundreds of indexable pages (some are indexing) - most of the pages are basically blank - just a day date and the calendar design on the page. How would you deal with this issue? I was thinking noindex but would prefer a solution where calendar isn't throwing out so many pages to begin with!

Look forward to reading your thoughts, Luke