Google`s Omitted Results

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Michael Martinez: Only on small Websites. What are you trying to accomplish?
• 
  Neil Cheesman: I have recently found a page/url that was in omitted results (I have got it out now) - it is in an industry where there is a lot of duplicate content - due to theatre shows being given certain text that MUST be used as a description for a production... the website has several thousand urls and I am wondering if any others are in the omitted results...
  Thinking out loud... I could take the list of urls in GSC that get traffic and are `ranked` and compare/sort in excel of actual urls... but a bit time consuming...
• 
  Michael Martinez: Neil Cheesman I don`t think you can use GSC to find omitted results, although someone else may have found a way.
  
  In my experience most of these omissions are driven by (near-) duplicate titles and/or meta descriptions. I`ve found that differentiating such page elements reduces omitted results considerably.
  
  But in effect you`re just giving the search engines a better way to not include less relevant content anyway - assuming you make the page titles and meta descriptions more accurate and reliable for truly distinct content.
  
  If you really have a lot of duplicate boilerplate content on the pages there are ways to deal with that to minimize confusion in the algorithm signals.
  
  1) Embed the boilerplate in an image
  2) Link to the boilerplate text
  3) Put the boilerplate text in an iframed page and prevent crawlers from getting to that page
  4) Embed the boilerplate in hidden on-page fields or HTML comments and use Javascript to extract and display it
  5) Embed the boilerplate in a separate page and display it in a popup window
  
  I`m pretty sure there are other ways to do this, too.
• 
  Casey Markee: Go into GCS, go under COVERAGE, and look for the CRAWLED BUT NOT INDEXED section. That report is a goldmine.
  
  That`s a fantastic (and easy) way to surface ignored, duplicate, low-quality, or thin content URLs on a website.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks Casey Markee - but re Omitted Results. these I assume wouldn`t show there? as they are indexed. (I will check out your suggestion)
• 
  Neil Cheesman: How interesting - the `excluded` includes `redirects` from the Wordpress url with the post number - ie before the permalink kicks in (I assume that is correct) - I am surprised that Google `sees` the pre-permalink url.
• 
  Casey Markee: Neil that`s usually a sign you are still linking to that previous URL internally and it`s getting crawled. You should look at finding and updating those links, internally.
  
  Removing internal permalinks is just a simple auditing best practice.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Casey Markee I think it occurs with all posts - and not to do with any linking.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: 16.7K of them.
• 
  Casey Markee: Neil I work with a lot of Wordpress sites. Very seldmon do I see those, at scale, in that filter. So I would look at it again.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Maybe something to do with how the permalinks are set up - I think this is via Yoast...
  ie.
  https://www.londontheatre1.com/.../review-of-the-dazzle.../… See More
• 
  Neil Cheesman: I will have to look deeper... it may not be on new content - and may have happened a while ago with url structure change.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks - found the `anomaly` section very useful (although not for omitted results)
• 
  Dave Elliott: What query is it omited for? Are you of the opinion that Google has chosen the wrong page of your site to answer the question?
  
  I don`t really get what the actual issue is?
• 
  Neil Cheesman: I had at least one url that was in omitted results... I wanted to see if there were any more...
• 
  Dave Elliott: Is a relevant page on your site ranking for the term though?
• 
  Neil Cheesman: no
• 
  Dave Elliott: So it`s probably a duplicate content issue and your site is considered less authorative than a rival....so you need to provide more value(more information) to your customers on the page or have a better link profile than your rival.
  
  Not aware of an automated way of finding the ommited results...but considering it is so queary dependemt I`m not even sure it would really be possible....I`d have a look at awr though, they tend to give you a lot of info about SERP features so might have something.....if they don`t then they are open to suggestions normally.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks - I recovered the particular url but it was this that I wondered about "automated way of finding the omitted results"
• 
  Bill Jones: yes