Should I disallow previews?

[Nora]

I'm trying to improve the structure of one of my sites so that Google bots have an easier time crawling and I was thinking of disallowing all preview files of layouts so only the page with the layout code is shown. Is this a good idea or is it better to include layout previews?

[lyzyrdgyzyrd]

If you are using a script that others are using and loading layouts that others are using, it would behoove you to just block all bots. Duplicate content.

[Nora]

Thanks for the reply :)
Not sure what you meant by the 'others are using'.
I just made a resource script and it shows a page with a thumbnail of the layout and the code below it and also another page for the preview of the layout. I keep seeing the both the preview and code files indexed but I'm not sure if having the preview files of layouts indexed is a good idea because they don't really contain any content. Do others block them too?

[Greg-J]

I would suggest using nofollow on the link(s) to your preview page as well as blocking it in your robots.txt.

[minnseoelite]

I've never had a problem allowing previews as far as a drop in rankings. One site I had improved its rankings after I unblocked Google from them. If you take the time and do it right they can be a good thing. The site that went up in rankings I SEO'd the page by adding dynamic text where ever I wanted my keywords to appear and it those words would change based on what category the layout was in.

Not saying its a guarantee as I've only fully tested it with one site but I'm sure they can be made to work for you.

[SamOwen]

Leave it up. Visitors love previews, thumbnails just don't cut it. Do what Greg suggested to keep the search bots away.

[Nora]

Thanks everyone :)
I never wanted to disable it for users, just bots. I'll do what Greg suggested.
I hope that if I disallow all pages that aren't really necessary Google can generate sitelinks more easily :)

[spotlight-shure]

What are search bots and what do they do? Sorry to ask in your thread but i have never heard of anything like this before =/

[Nora]

What are search bots and what do they do? Sorry to ask in your thread but i have never heard of anything like this before =/
They crawl and index sites :)

[Benahue]

What are search bots and what do they do? Sorry to ask in your thread but i have never heard of anything like this before =/
Google is downloading the Internet. When a search bot visits your page and caches it, it is being stored on Google's servers. If you want to see if a page of your site is stored on Google's servers, type cache:nameofsite.com. Overtime, a page may no longer show up when you do that command. It does not mean that Google doesn't have your page on their servers anymore; it just means they have chosen not to make it available for you to see by searching.

The exact reason why Google de-caches a perfectly fine page has never been clear. If you stop updating a page and it stops receiving incoming links for a very long time, it will likely get de-cached, but Google still has it downloaded (since Google claims not to delete anything), so their reason to de-index it is not known.

[kirdes]

Nora - I agree with Greg, use the rel="no follow" . I have this on all my previews.

[mawt]

Nora - I agree with Greg, use the rel="no follow" . I have this on all my previews.

Yep do that, I do the same thing :)