On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 'Twas brillig, and Andrew Ballard at 20/08/10 14:24 did gyre and gimble: >> Would it work to return a list of some limited number of randomly >> ordered "featured" listings/items on the page, while leaving the full >> list ordered by whatever natural ordering (by date, order entered, >> alphabetical, etc.)? That gives every owner a chance to appear in a >> prominent spot on the page while solving the issue you cited about >> page breaks (and SEO if that is a concern). You can still use any of >> the suggestions that have been discussed to determine how frequently >> the featured items list is reseeded to help make caching practical. > > Yeah we've tried to push this as an option too, but so far our clients > are not biting on this suggestion. They like the idea.... but in > addition to randomised listings too! > > Speaking of SEO, that was one of our concerns about randomising listings > too. What impact do you think such randomised listings will have on SEO? > > Obviously if a term is matched for a listing page that contains a thing > and when the user visits that page, the thing itself is not on in the > listing, then the user will be disappointed, but will this actually > result in SEO penalties? > > Col I'm not sure it would penalize you in the algorithms. I was thinking more of the number of times I have followed a promising-looking link and found that the site where I was directed was a page of and index of article headings or post subjects showing results 1000-1500 out of 10000+, and the item I was hoping to see is no longer on that page. Is it on the next page? No. Next page? No. Oh, forget it - back go [search engine]. In that case, even if the site's page rank doesn't decrease, the search results are out-of-sync and thus inaccurate. The site can definitely take a hit with regard to end-user perception and can cause annoyed users to leave and/or ignore your site, which are more important issues than a number from some search engine's algorithm. After all, it doesn't matter how many people Google, Bing, Yahoo or some other search engine sends your way if those users end up frustrated by the experience and don't actually use the site once they get there. Andrew -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
