Some SEO advice for Google, from Google
2nd March 2010 by Tom Hallett
I noticed recently that Google has at least 3 very similar pages listed in their index.
They pages I saw are:
- http://www.google.com/chrome/?hl=en-GB
- http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac&hl=en-GB
- http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=linux&hl=en-GB
If you have a quick look at the pages, you’ll see that they are very similar. All have the same page title tag:
Google Chrome – Get a fast new browser. For PC, Mac and Linux
And the same meta-description:
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer and easier.
The content on each page is also very similar, with only the H2 heading and footer links different on each page.
SEO advice
OK, so I doubt Google actually need any SEO advice. And it’s not a total disaster to have pages like this, especially for a site with so much authority.
But having pages like this with duplicate content on your website could potentially damage your rankings. Here’s Google’s own solutions on they could deal with these pages:
Minimise similar content
Google could merge these pages into one page only. Then set up 301 redirections from the old pages to point to the new page to tell themselves that the content has moved.
Use the canonical tag
Google could tell themselves which page they want to be indexed by using the canonical tag across the duplicate pages.
An issue with this approach is that users might not land on the most appropriate page for their search query from the search engines – potentially, each click to find the page they want is a barrier to a conversion (in this case, a person downloading Chrome).
Parameter handling
Google could tell themselves to ignore certain parameters (such as platform= or hl=). They could do this in Google Webmaster Tools by going to Site configuration and Settings in the left-hand menu.
However, again this will mean that some users may not land on the most appropriate page for their search query
Unique title tags and meta-descriptions
However, the the best solution here would be for Google to take notice of the HTML suggestions tool in the Diagnostics section of Google Webmaster Tools.
This will probably tell them that they have duplicate title tags and meta-descriptions and that dealing with these issues “won’t prevent your site from appearing in Google search results, but addressing them may help your site’s user experience and performance.”
Then they could update each title tag and meta-description to make them all unique.