Tilda ~ in website name / URL's?

[daveman123]

Hi Guys,

I have a web design business and we access our client accounts using tilda.

For example, mydomain.com/~customeraccount1.

I notice that these URL's sometimes show up on Google when you search for "mydomain".

- Do you know if these hurt my rankings?
- Is there any best practice to prevent accessing other accounts using the tilda? I tried searching Google and was surprised that I couldn't find this information.

[tstolber]

There are two separate issues here.

1- use of the tilda symbol. This will be treated as a character, although in some situations it is considered an operator. Neither of which will have any significant impact for SEO considerations.

2- How it is being found in Google. If you are intending to have hidden content or development content that is accessible without any permission criteria then it could be an issue. You should make sure that the content is not indexable (use robots.txt and or .htaccess & .htpasswd permissions).

[logreen]

Hi Guys,

I have a web design business and we access our client accounts using tilda.

For example, mydomain.com/~customeraccount1.

I notice that these URL's sometimes show up on Google when you search for "mydomain".

- Do you know if these hurt my rankings?
- Is there any best practice to prevent accessing other accounts using the tilda? I tried searching Google and was surprised that I couldn't find this information.

You can make them nofollow or block them for search engine bots (through robots.txt)

[deadmix]

i think the best way is using the .htaccess by making a 301 redirect...

[ClickyB]

robots.txt will prevent Google from indexing the content, but they will still index the url if there are links aimed at it.
You would have to use it in tandem with .htaccess/.htapsswd to prevent them from indexing the urls (unless you can add the robots meta "noindex" to the internal pages).

You can make them nofollow or block them for search engine bots (through robots.txt)

Using nofollow on the links leading to the pages will not prevent googlebot from actually following them and spidering the internal content.
Re: Blocking them through robots.txt... see my comment above.

i think the best way is using the .htaccess by making a 301 redirect

A 301 redirect would prevent everyone from accessing the internal pages (unless you differentiate between googlebot and browsers... which can be a very risky thing to do).


@ daveman123:

1. If you can add a "robots-meta (noindex)" to your customer account pages, that will stop Google from listing them (permanently) and still allow you to access them via a browser (without a password).
Note: Google normally remove them from their index quite quickly when you do this).

2. If you want to use password-restriction that will work (but the pages may take some time to be removed from the index).

If removal of the url's is quite urgent, you can also use Google's url removal tool.

[daveman123]

Hi Guys, thanks for the much appreciated suggestions. It seems like it all points to adding a robots file so that Google doesn't index it. There's an issue there, because I still want Google to index it when someone goes to Customers_Domain.com. I just don't want it to count towards my rating when someone visits My_Domain.com/~customers_account.

Is there an .htaccess or robots.txt technique where I can say "only count this if it's from a visitor coming from Customers_Domain.com, and NOT from My_Domain.com/~customers_account?

I'm thinking the only solution is to have two servers.