I am considering introducing duplicate files to solve a peculiar problem in my site. I have pop-ups that are in fact small html files and some are quite successful inasmuch as they are opened directly from the web (and not from the page where they live as pop-ups). So, I had to adapt the files by adding sidebars that can only be seen if arrived at directly from the web. However, I have some design problems and one of the solutions is to have two pages: one without the sidebars to be used as a pop-up from the main page; another with the sidebars for vistors who arrive there directly from googling. The main central part of the full page will be an identical copy of the content of the pop-up.
Now, I am unceratain as to how search engines would “react” to this duplication of content, even if the pop-up version would include a “noindex, nofollow”
And why not a third option? Forget about the pop-ups (which are a bad practice anyway) and leave those files as regular web pages. As you said, you’re getting better results from the regular pages than from the pop-ups
I suspect that your web pages will be ranked higher. I don’t think you’ll be penalized since everything is in the same server. But if you want all the ranking to go to the same place (although, for a pop-up, ranking is not something to worry about), this has an easy solution.
If you’re going to duplicate the content, place the pop-up version in an independent folder and change your robots.txt so that folder doesn’t get crawled. For the search engine, the content will not be duplicated since the crawler will not read the folder.
The second opiton is to have only one version of the pop-up and use some programning to check if the file is being opened as a pop-up or as a web page. If the first, then remove the sidebars
Hi Many thanks. In fact, your suggestion above has already been coded for. However, you end up with two files with identical content, all the same. And thcode involved in scripts, compared with two simple files does not make it a practcal proposition.
Anyway, returnig to what really matters at the moment, SEO, your suggestion to put it in a sub-folder protected by the robsts.txt is, I think, equivalent to placing a nofolow, noindex on the actual page, or not?
Do you mean duplicate content would be a positive thing???
Having the versions with the rest of the page around them in the search engines and telling the search engines to ignore the bare copies will get you a higher ranking.
Telling search engines to list both will result in much lower rankings.
Anyway duplicating the files is completely unnecessary - simply add a querystring to the popup call that hides the part of the page you don’t want seen in the popup version. Of course with popup blockers stopping the popup from opening and people configuring their browser so that popups overwrite the current page instead having the popup version will just drive visitors away whatever you do with the search engines.
I am now happy to understand that if I went for two identical files and noindexed the pop-up there would be no penalty. Good!
Now for the
I call it a pop-up, but I look at it as a normal html page called by a script that someone a long time ago wrote for me. I wondert what it is. Could you have a look at say http://pintotours.net/Europe/Spain/Barcelona.html and open any of the link buttons in the sidebars or the hotel “Look inside”. They act as pop-ups but are they pop-ups? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for 18 months!
Since last post I decided to turn on the pop-up blocker in my IE9 and the pop-ups keep opening!
What am I missing?
PS- I’ve just checked Chrome where I have pop-ups blocked and the pop-ups do appear, like in IE) That must mean that they are not treated like pop-ups, I guess…
molona, did you try to block pop-ups in your computer and then see if you can open them? I’m confused now because they’ve been around for nearly two years and this is the first time the question of pop-up blockers has come up.
Please block pop-ups and tell me what happens, please.
They don’t act as popups in my browser - they just open in the browser as if they were a regular link leaving me wondering where all the navigation links to the rest of the site have gone.
If it were me trying to actually use the site when I saw that happen I’d leave your site and move on to the next one that probably cares enough about visitors to not steal the navigation away as soon as you select the first link.
Translation, please! I don’t get what you’re driving at. Could you explain, especially the [quote=“felgall, post:13, topic:111395”]
steal the navigation
[/quote]
All the clever stuff has been coded by friends and I am learning everyday. But your comment surprises me beacause ALL the code is easily accessible.
But surely the visitor goes to a page by pressing a link button! That’s his choice, and as I wrote before all the code is easily seen. I still don’t understand what could be the slightest problem with the link, but maybe you could explain. It turns out that it is not even a pop-up, but simply a regular page.
I’m stll wondering what the comment was about. I guess that what you both mean is that once you press the pop-up link you are on a page without navigation. That is true, but you have a "Close " button, and the whole idea of the pop-up is that the original page with dozens of navigation links is still there underneath. You close the po-up and carry on with the main page. What’s wrong with that? I’m confused.
That’s the case when it is a pop-up. But when it opens as a page it can be closed - without the original page still being open - or “back” could maybe be used (haven’t tried it).
Point being, most visitors presented with such a page would be confused at best and annoyed at worse and most likely simply leave.
That’s confusing (IMO), because I wouldn’t have expected that button to open in a pop-up; I’d have expected it to take me to a new page. So I wouldn’t think “Ah, this is a pop-up not working because I have JS disabled” but rather “Eek! Where’s the navigation gone?”
