Deactivate Unused List Pages to Avoid Search Engine Penalities

Every Sites@Duke Pro site comes with several Content Type List Pages activated by default.

However, if your site does not use one or more of the available content types, the associated list pages will appear empty. For example, https://sitespro.duke.edu/resources/ has no Resources to display, because this website does not publish any Resource content.

Image

We have learned that these empty lists may be negatively affecting your search engine rankings. We recommend the following actions to avoid penalties from Google and other search engines.

Current customers

Audit your existing list pages, and then disable the empty ones. A Site Admin user should:

1. In the Drupal admin menu, go to Structure > Site Information.
2. Click Customize List Pages. This will reveal a list of all List Pages on the site and their URLs – e.g., a Blog List Page with the URL Alias "blog" will live at yoursite.duke.edu/blog.
3. Audit each list page, and note any that do not display any content.
4. Under Customize List Pages, deactivate each unused list page by unchecking its "Activate" checkbox.
5. Scroll to the bottom and click Save.

New customers

Moving forward, list pages will be deactivated by default for all new Sites Pro sites, after our upcoming Buddy release is deployed. To activate a List Page, follow the instructions on our User Guide.