[blaze]

Originally Posted by web20guy

"But alas the issue of duplicate content and Google is very real."

Just to clarify to you, the duplicate content filter will select the BEST PAGE to represent the content searched for -- this is at Google's Discretion too. There is NO PENALTY as Google says, but when you have 4700 pages and only 300 are being indexed, I'd say that the analogy of "no penalty" is kind of ridiculous, to say the least -- unless you are blocking or restricting urls.

So that is what you need to look up. There could be several reasons as to why Google only indexes 300+ pages out of 4700. First, have you checked your Google webmaster tools and looked over how many urls are not being indexed due to your robots.txt file? Check in the OVERVIEW SECTION and see how many are restricted. That can really answer a lot. If 4000+ urls aren't being indexed because of your robots.txt file, then you know the reason why. You should also check how many duplicate meta titles, descriptions, etc. are being recorded by Google. You can check that by going to DIAGNOSTICS >> CONTENT ANALYSIS.

If at the end of your research and the majority of "bad urls" is coming from Duplicate Meta Data, then I'd suggest you use this hack. If it's due to your robots.txt fle, then now you know just how many duplicate pages could have caused you problems and it's working. Although, I somehow doubt that's the case in your scenario.

Also, remember, if your robots.txt file has all the right things (pages) to block, then there is really no need for that code snippet in your meta.tpl file where it shows this:

{if $indexit eq "1" OR $pagename eq "story"}
    <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
{else}
    <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
{/if}

Now, here's the bad part -- even if you did everything right, Google doesn't have to index anything they don't want to. This is the one thing that drives webmasters crazy -- how some sites get more pages indexed than others. Some people think it has to do with page rank, the age of your domain, etc.; while others believe you need thousands of link backs to get more pages indexed. But whatever it is, Google is not sharing (nor ever will) on how and why they index certain pages the way they do. They only say have patience and everything will eventually fall into place.

This code hack I provided works well for me, I have 3097 urls blocked with 1,510 urls indexed, 0 Duplicate Titles and Meta data. I am also number one in Google for a powerful Keyword Phrase, with about 100 of other phrases pulling my site in the TOP TEN. However, my site was already number one when I used this hack and the only thing it did was bring about tons more different keyword phrases, which ultimately raised my traffic nearly 50%. So it does work.

Your site is a large site -- and depending on how many categories you have, it might be a bit overwhelming for you to do. I suggest you try with about 10 different categories (the most popular ones) and see if that makes a difference. If it does, then you can do the others. You should always test this out first if you have a ton of categories.

Finally, your last question. If you want Lensroll Networking to come at the end, you should be using this method at the very end just after the last {else} statement:

Instead of:

<title>{if isset($pretitle)}{$pretitle}{/if}{#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}{if isset($posttitle)} | {$navbar_where.text1} {/if} | {$navbar_where.text2}</title>

Use:

<title>{if isset($pretitle)}{$pretitle}{/if}{if isset($posttitle)} | {$navbar_where.text1} {/if} | {$navbar_where.text2} {#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}</title>

Alternatively, you can also remove {#PLIGG_Visual_Name#} altogether if you don't want your site name to appear at all in your titles.

Also, many people use this for their titles:

{if $pagename eq "story" || $pagename eq "topusers" || $pagename eq "cloud"}
<title>{$posttitle|substr:3} | {#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}</title>
{elseif $pagename eq "search"}
<title>{$posttitle|substr:22} search results | {#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}</title>
{else}
<title>{$pretitle}{#PLIGG_Visual_Name#}{$posttitle }</title>
{/if}

The above code works well, but I prefer to have more control when it comes ot categories and having stronger keyword phrases present.

I hope you understand all of this.