Member Avatar for bo0ga

I'm trying to improve the SEO for a website of a Brooklyn plumbing company I used to work for. I want to add a "Get a quote" page where users fill out a brief form including a description about the problem, etc. I want to add a sub-URL for every neighborhood in Brooklyn which all have the form and which all get sent to the same email.

Example:
www.plumbingcompany.com/Get_a_quote/park_slope
www.plumbingcompany.com/Get_a_quote/williamsburg
www.plumbingcompany.com/Get_a_quote/bay_ridge

Etc. Every page would show the same form, and I would keep going for every neighborhood in Brooklyn which is about 50-70. Would something like this be considered "keyword spam" or whatever it is that makes Google stop crawling your page?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by canadafred

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Short answer: yes — publishing dozens of near‑identical neighborhood pages that only swap the place name and show the same quote form is risky. Google explicitly calls out location-targeted pages that funnel users to the same destination as doorway/scaled‑content and can devalue or remove those pages; creating many low‑value URLs can also trigger the “helpful content” checks that treat search-first content harshly. ’s caution is accurate. (developers.google.com)

You can avoid exposure in a few ways, but pick the right tool for the job. Blocking crawling is one option (as mentioned), yet robots.txt blocks prevent Google from seeing page-level instructions like a meta noindex and blocked URLs can still appear if linked elsewhere. If you want pages kept out of search while still usable by visitors, allow crawling and use noindex; if your intent is consolidation, prefer 301 redirects or rel="canonical" to point duplicates to a single preferred URL. Example canonical line (place in the page <head> of duplicate pages): 

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.plumbingcompany.com/Get_a_quote/" />

(developers.google.com)

A safer, more effective approach: either keep one well‑built “Get a quote” page and track the neighborhood server‑side (or via a query param) or only create separate neighborhood pages when each page adds real, local value — local case studies, neighborhood‑specific FAQs, photos, team availability, parking/access notes, unique testimonials, or business licensing/permit info. Use LocalBusiness/serviceArea structured data so search understands your coverage. Pages that genuinely help users earn visibility; templated, thin pages do not. (developers.google.com)

Quick checklist before you publish many URLs: pilot a handful first; validate structured data and canonical/noindex signals; submit sitemaps; monitor Search Console (URL Inspection, Coverage, Manual Actions); and watch crawl stats — many low‑value URLs waste crawl budget and slow discovery of your important pages. If you can’t add distinct, useful content per neighborhood, don’t create them at scale. (developers.google.com)

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Member Avatar for Dani

I would add the /Get_a_quote/ directory to your robots.txt file. I do this whenever there are many pages with near identical content. It is a directive telling the search engine bots not to crawl the directory.

Specifically, if it doesn't already exist, create a file called robots.txt at the root of your site, and put the following into it:

User-agent: *
Disallow:   /Get_a_quote/
Member Avatar for canadafred

It's possible for the search engine to rank these cookie-cutter pages, not because of your brilliant SEO scheme, but because it won't likely find many web pages that have more unique or more valuable content than your useless and extremely boring doorway pages. (I'm allowed to run my sentences because I'm scolding you, in a loving way)

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