Hi,

This might be a silly question as I am sure you have likely addressed it in the module code, but do I need to do anything special to prevent google from indexing this page in my robots.txt file, or does this module automatically redirect search spiders from my splash page to my front page?

If not how do I force the robots.txt file to direct spider bots to my front page for indexing - not my splash page?

Thanks

Comments

drupaledmonk’s picture

Issue tags: +Drupal, +Splash, +index, +spiders, +crawlers

I find that the crawlers are not able to get past my splash page and index the homepage. Do I have to specify something in the robots.txt.

rc2020’s picture

It would be nice if a maintainer could chime in on this issue it seems like a fairly straightforward question - and there seems to be no mention in any documentation anywhere...

rc2020’s picture

Has there been a chance for anyone to take a look at this? Please let me know I have lost search engine rankings since installing a splash page.

Thanks!

ukrdrupal’s picture

I personally would not use the splash for anything but the main index page of your site. You should have all other pages excluded, otherwise this will hurt you with the search engines. It certainly is a cool effect to have the splash page work, no matter what page a visitor hits. However, I think it would hurt visits (which came from a search engine query) to the site because unless they are going to be redirected back to the actual page that they thought they were coming for, you are kind of "cheating" them out of the result they thought they would get. As far as the splash pages in conjunction with the home page, it's easy. Only use the splash for your home page and when they hit your site, they will get the splash page and can be redirected back to the home page. I have a link to my home page on the splash pages and I also put meta redirects on the splash pages, so that if they sit there for several seconds, they'll get redirected back to home.

acdtrp’s picture

My splash opens in a Thickbox and is set to show "Once". Will this affect the search engine bots? The module doesn't have option to set on which page the splash will appear, only how often. But will it show every time to the bot since it doesn't care about cookies? Loosing SERP position to the splash screen is not an option I think.

chrisroane’s picture

Using thickbox or another lightbox shouldn't be seen by google.

However, we have had issues in the past where google index our splash page as our home page when we used the redirect option.

This is partly why I created a drupal 7 module called splashify that should be more SEO friendly. When using the redirect option, it uses JS to redirect the user to the splash page. This should prevent google from indexing your home page as your splash page. There are also many other features that I implemented into the module. Here is the sandbox project: http://drupal.org/node/1425392

It is clear that this module is not being actively maintained, so I want to take the lead on this for the Drupal 7 project. I need help in getting this project approved as a full project. Here is the issue that covers this process: http://drupal.org/node/1425392

avpaderno’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (outdated)
Issue tags: -, -, -index, -spiders, -crawlers

I am closing this issue, since it is for a Drupal version that is no longer supported. Please re-open this issue if it is relevant for a project release for a supported Drupal version.

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