State-level Business Registrations - Good for Rankings?

[DanLeibson]

While robots.txt may allow crawling, it's only half of the equation. The other half is whether Google can actually crawl the data or not.

A lot of data we see as the end user is query based and have temporary URL's that can't be replicated by Google. Google needs a permanent or "hard" URL to crawl. That's why you rarely see a URL from a Google SERP with programming syntax (might be wrong vernacular here) with "?", "&" etc. Those seem to be a dead giveaway that the URL you're looking at is query generated and therefore, "temporary" for lack of a better term.

Just FYI, URL parameters get crawled and indexed all the time. They are a huge problem for site performance, because of all the content duplication that they can cause, and part of the reason Google released rel="canonical" and gave webmasters the ability to set URL parameters in Google Search Console. But Google absolutely can and does crawl and index them, often prolifically.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Just FYI, URL parameters get crawled and indexed all the time. They are a huge problem for site performance, because of all the content duplication that they can cause, and part of the reason Google released rel="canonical" and gave webmasters the ability to set URL parameters in Google Search Console.

URL parameters, thanks Dan. That's what I was looking for

While they may get crawled and indexed, I personally would not say it's often. We typically see when building citations that many URL's with parameters do not get indexed. In fact, calling it 50/50 would be generous from my experience I think. Again, just my experience. And the ones that do get indexed only have maybe 1-2 parameters. Most government websites I've dealt with have many, many parameters.

Just food for thought.

 

[DanLeibson]

URL parameters, thanks Dan. That's what I was looking for

While they may get crawled and indexed, I personally would not say it's often. We typically see when building citations that many URL's with parameters do not get indexed. In fact, calling it 50/50 would be generous from my experience I think. Again, just my experience. And the ones that do get indexed only have maybe 1-2 parameters. Most government websites I've dealt with have many, many parameters.

Just food for thought.

We work with a lot of large IYPs and URL parameters are specifically a huge problem for them I have seen strings of several parameters where different orders of the same parameters were indexed for multiple URLs. It's not as uncommon as you think.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

We work with a lot of large IYPs and URL parameters are specifically a huge problem for them I have seen strings of several parameters where different orders of the same parameters were indexed for multiple URLs. It's not as uncommon as you think.

We do a ton of indexing work specifically with citations and the only issues we have pertaining to indexing are multiple URL parameters. They are a huge pain.

We may have to agree to disagree on this one

 

[DanLeibson]

We do a ton of indexing work specifically with citations and the only issues we have pertaining to indexing are multiple URL parameters. They are a huge pain.

We may have to agree to disagree on this one

Fair enough, but the issue does seem pretty settled. That being said, a low quality site with lots of pages isn't going to have the crawl budget for Google to try to figure out all their URL parameters.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Fair enough, but the issue does seem pretty settled. That being said, a low quality site with lots of pages isn't going to have the crawl budget for Google to try to figure out all their URL parameters.

I had not thought about that. Very interesting point. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

For us though, we're not waiting for Google to crawl the site and pick it up on their own. We're doing direct indexing for a specific URL and Google can't pick it up.

But that is something I will definitely keep in mind in the future.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Okay here is the "official" response from Google: Most of our data comes from third party feeds and other licencors, which could include data from government sources.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Okay here is the "official" response from Google: Most of our data comes from third party feeds and other licencors, which could include data from government sources.

What an awesome, vague answer shouldn't expect anything less haha.

I think it makes sense for them to use government sources to grab info for their database but I doubt it helps ranking at all.

Now, a government website citation on the other hand...well, it definitely can't hurt.