Google help

[Northstar]

I'm think I'm being penalized by Google for accidently having duplicate pages. I contacted Google via there reinclusion form and I'm waiting to hear back. Our link list CGI program offers dynamic and static options. Well we always used dynamic pages but about three months ago I changes the links to static to make the page load faster. I now realize I probably should have but the unused dynamic pages in exclusion on a robots.txt file. At the time I forgot all about it. I was wondering if you guys had a idea as to what I should do. All of our pages that are indexed on Google are dynamic pages so if I add them to the exclusion that may hurt the standing I have now on Google but I would rather have them index the static pages. Should I continue to just use the dynamic URLs since that is what Google originally indexed? Or should I change back to the static pages and hope Google picks them up the same as the old dynamic pages. I know now that I need to have a robot exclusion for one or the other I'm just not sure what would be best.

[_ap_]

the dup content penalty is automatic.. dont do it.

ap.

[Northstar]

Thanks but I know I shouldn't have duplicate content it was just a oversight that I didn't put the duplicate static pages in a robots.txt file.

My question is google has indexed my dynamic pages years ago but I prefer to have them index static pages. Should I block the dynamic pages or since they already indexed them should I just block the static pages?

Also how to I write the robots exclution for dynamic pages?

[Northstar]

would this block my dynamic pages? Since all dynamic pages have a ? in them.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /?

[desslock]

Thanks but I know I shouldn't have duplicate content it was just a oversight that I didn't put the duplicate static pages in a robots.txt file.

My question is google has indexed my dynamic pages years ago but I prefer to have them index static pages. Should I block the dynamic pages or since they already indexed them should I just block the static pages?

That's a tough call. If Google has had a set of your pages in its index for years, and its working, I would be inclined to leave it alone. But on the other hand it could reindex you, and integrate your new pages into the engine, but it may take a year for all the new dust to settle.

Also - consider using Google Sitemaps

Steve

[Togm]

Yep - google sitemap is a great tool!

[Northstar]

What is google sitemaps and does it help you position in google?

[Dzinerbear]

Google sitemaps doesn't help you get better rankings per se, it's a sitemap tool that helps Google index your search engine better. It helps make sure that everything you want crawled gets crawled.

Try this tool to see if you're banned:

http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

If you want to hit me up on ICQ or AIM and give me your URL, I can do some poking around the SE's with you to give you my assessment.

Here's a good article on the issue:
http://www.webconfs.com/dynamic-urls...-article-3.php

And here's another with specific quotes from Google:
http://www.vbseo.com/f2/google-com-d...tic-urls-2466/

Cheers,
Michael

[Northstar]

Thanks Dzinerbear, I will take you up on that offer. It would be good to have a outside person look at the site to see if I overlooked anything.