Googlebot indexes sidebar on every post and page

  • I recently enabled Google Custom Search on my website and now I realize that Googlebot renders the right sidebar and includes its contents in the index for every post and page!

    I use a right sidebar in twenty fourteen for my movie review website http;//soccermoviemom.com. The right sidebar has a tag cloud and links to all the pages on the site. Every word in the tag cloud gets indexed as appearing on every post and page. So if you search for “British” movies, every movie and page ends up in the custom search result (SERP) making specific search useless.

    How do I keep Googlebot from doing this?

    I saw that people asked a similar question years ago, but there was no clear answer.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Are you aware of of the nocontent class you can apply to divs and spans for boilerplate content?

    https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/2364585?hl=en

    Thread Starter MJ

    (@prmyapps)

    No, I wasn’t aware of the nocontent class.

    But where would I put this generated code?

    And would this only apply to Google Custom Search, or would it apply to Google Search as well? My understanding is that the two search engines are separate.

    Thx for your help!

    Thread Starter MJ

    (@prmyapps)

    Marios, I googled this nocontent class solution, and it appears that people have complained for several years that it doesn’t work. I also couldn’t find any examples of using this technique for a wordpress site.

    Have you implemented this yourself?

    BTW, I found one posting saying this solution would not work for Google Search, only for Google Custom Search. Google Search and SEO is really my main concern.

    I don’t think Google Custom Search cares where the site is WordPress or not. It just sees a website.

    I haven’t used Google Custom Search in a while. I actually prefer the Relevanssi plugin for handling my site’s internal search.

    Thread Starter MJ

    (@prmyapps)

    Hey WordPress world,
    has anyone solved this problem themselves?
    It IS a problem, isn’t it? It’s not just me?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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