This is something that I have been thinking for quite some time. Up until now users at my directory could choose the order that the links were displayed (by date, by popularity, alphabetical, descending ascending). Of course that meant that search bots could do the same. So the result would be that search engines would see a number of identical pages with rearranged content which in the future might have lead in duplicate content penalties. Today after some thinking I decided to remove that option. I realise that I will lose a large number of indexed pages but I believe it’s better to have fewer and properly indexed pages that a lot of them and supplemental.
Another thing that a lot of directory owners sometimes forget to do and can also lead to duplicate content penalties is to disallow search bots from pages that are all the same, for example the submit link pages or the upgrade listings pages.
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August 23rd, 2006 at 11:51 pm
sometimes these sorting options give 404 errors as well. even though it might be a good idea to remove them, if you are a niche directory owner, you are better of keeping it as your visitors might be in search of something and this could come in handy.