Yahoo Organic Results showing Adwords Source Codes

[BlizzGirl]

I was checking some organic listings for one of my clients today and ran across this in Yahoo SERPs. This is VERY odd. Has anyone else seen this? What are the implications?


Fargo North Dakota Hotel – Fargo ND Lodging – Fargo Moorhead Hotel – Fargo
C'mon Inn, a Fargo North Dakota hotel, serves a continental breakfast perfect for family vacations and business travelers to the Fargo-Moorhead area. Near North Dakota ...
www.cmoninn.com/fargo-nd-hotel.htm?source=googleadwords - 14k - Cached - More from this site - Save



My first reaction was that Yahoo is spidering Google's PPCs or redirecting their own organic listing through a google PPC, but why? I have this source code on their Google AdWords PPC account.

Any thoughts?

[jbgilbert]

This is just a PPC landing page and URL that happened to achieve some organic rankings.

More typically landing pages use a noindex meta tag to prevent the SE's from crawling and indexing the pages and thus creating listings with duplicate content -- these guys apparently are not aware of the proper way to set up landing pages.

[rustybrick]

What is weird is that Yahoo said there are no links to that page.

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmoninn.com%2Ffargo-nd-hotel.htm%3Fsource%3Dgoogleadwords&bwm=p&bwms=p&searchbwm=Explore+URL

Wonder what is up with this....

[BlizzGirl]

This is just a PPC landing page and URL that happened to achieve some organic rankings.

More typically landing pages use a noindex meta tag to prevent the SE's from crawling and indexing the pages and thus creating listings with duplicate content -- these guys apparently are not aware of the proper way to set up landing pages.

we dont use landing pages - we just direct our clicks directly to a relevant page on the site (and enjoy low CPC's also)

I guess my issue is, the only way to get to this page, with this unique source code, is by clicking on an AdWords PPC ad.

Thanks
Carrie

[BlizzGirl]

What is weird is that Yahoo said there are no links to that page.

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmoninn.com%2Ffargo-nd-hotel.htm%3Fsource%3Dgoogleadwords&bwm=p&bwms=p&searchbwm=Explore+URL

Wonder what is up with this....

I just looked at this - and yes - the URL WITH the source code shows no inlinks - without the sourcecode it shows 19. Strange to say the least

[Brian M]

Yes, I just noticed this in a new section of a client's web site that another developer created without setting up a 404 server header code whenever a Google tracking code was added in a query string.

It seems to happen when Yahoo crawls a page containing "Ads by Google" then follows the ad link into the advertiser's site. If the page returns a 200 (page found) it adds the page to its index (Google tracking code included). This will result in duplicate content over time, since two (or more) identical pages with different URLs will be indexed.

I set up a 404 (not found) and also put a <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex"> on the page whenever there is a query string appended to the URL. This may be overkill, but it's the only way I know of to stop this from happening.

Then, you have to be very patient and wait for Yahoo to eventually delete the 404'd page...

Brian M

[Brian M]

Hi Rusty - very astute observation:

What is weird is that Yahoo said there are no links to that page.

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmoninn.com%2Ffargo-nd-hotel.htm%3Fsource%3Dgoogleadwords&bwm=p&bwms=p&searchbwm=Explore+URL

Wonder what is up with this....
Since the ads are rotated, it could be that the latest crawl of the AdSense page did not show the ad, so there are no inlinks anymore (at this moment in time) - but that is just my speculation...

Unfortunately, now that Yahoo has the URL with the query string in its cache, it will continue to try and crawl that page...

[BlizzGirl]

I set up a 404 (not found) and also put a <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex"> on the page whenever there is a query string appended to the URL. This may be overkill, but it's the only way I know of to stop this from happening.

Then, you have to be very patient and wait for Yahoo to eventually delete the 404'd page...

Brian M

The query string that is appended to this url is added by Google AdWords when someone clicks through an ad onto the site. I guess my question is, if I put the noindex on the page - will any spider crawl it? There is no URL on the site that actually is www.cmoninn.com/fargo-nd-hotel.htm?source=googleadwords - it's only created by clicking through an AdWords ad.

I'm quite a novice when it comes to code and hosting issues, unfortunately - so your help is appreciated.

[Brian M]

Hi BlizzGirl,

The META tag should only appear on the page when a query string string is added because it will stop all crawls of the desired page otherwise.

This is much easier said than done, so you probably need to get some programming help on your end to accomplish this, unless somebody else here can help you out (this is a hint to all you lurkers to please jump right in now...).

Brian M

[BlizzGirl]

Thanks Brian,
I'll take this to my hosting department and see what they think. We have others here who can help me with code & hosting - i just like to figure stuff out on my own - it makes me feel smarter :D

If anyone has any other ideas, I'm keen to hear them!

Much Thanks!
~Carrie

[fthead9]

I was just looking at a client's index in Yahoo, yes I know should be at SES instead, and sure enough they have indexed Adwords URLs. The client isn't running any Adsense ads so it does look like Yahoo is indexing from Google's or the Google search network paid listings. Very odd and potentially a dup content nightmare. What's up Yahoo?