4 replies to this topic

[valerif]

dear all,

in the google webmaster report i have a number of so called soft 404 errors

when i check the URL with the Google Fetch feature I get the following information:

This is how Googlebot fetched the page.

URL: http://printingcanvas.co.uk/business-man-in-the-city-pr-73.html?action=buy_now&currency=USD

Date: Thu Oct 21 20:54:30 PDT 2010

Googlebot Type: Web

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:54:31 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.14
Location: http://printingcanvas.co.uk/cookie_usage.php
Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=200
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html

if i copy the url link and put it in the browser i am not taken to COOKIE_USAGE.PHP

i am concerned that there is this 302 redirect and can not understand where its coming from?


and why google see this as a temporary redirect? or do you think this is normal?

should i not bother about it?

your advise would be apreciated

notice this url is the one generated when going into the review area (pr) :
business-man-in-the-city-pr-73.html

the normal url is (no pr):
business-man-in-the-city-73.html

should i be concerned about this or ignore this issue

any advise would be appreciated

thanks
valerif

[MrPhil]

Odd. I tried your original link, and (according to Firefox/Live HTTP headers) got a 302 rewrite to /business-man-in-the-city-p-73.html?osCsid=asessionID. Dunno why -pr- changed to -p-, or why the UQS was stripped off. If you don't have anything in your .htaccess doing this rewrite, could your SEO add-on be doing it? If not, maybe the adding of the session ID has something to do with it. Anyway, I'm not getting any rewrites to a "cookie_usage.php" file. Do you have cookies shut off on your browser? Does this behave the same way for a logged-in customer? The fact that it's Google, and not a live customer, hints that there's something in your .htaccess or in the PHP code dealing specifically with search engine bots. Maybe the SEO add-on is doing that? I would take this up in the support area for the SEO add-on you're using, as that is most likely at the heart of it.

Note that either an .htaccess RewriteRule or a PHP header("Location: call will by default give you a 302 code if it includes the http://domainname. If it just has a path and filename, I think it does a 200 by default (or you can override the 302 with an explicit 200 code... can't remember at the moment which is needed).

Edited by MrPhil, 24 October 2010, 23:57.

[valerif]

MrPhil, on 24 October 2010, 23:54, said:

Odd. I tried your original link, and (according to Firefox/Live HTTP headers) got a 302 rewrite to /business-man-in-the-city-p-73.html?osCsid=asessionID. Dunno why -pr- changed to -p-, or why the UQS was stripped off. If you don't have anything in your .htaccess doing this rewrite, could your SEO add-on be doing it? If not, maybe the adding of the session ID has something to do with it. Anyway, I'm not getting any rewrites to a "cookie_usage.php" file. Do you have cookies shut off on your browser? Does this behave the same way for a logged-in customer? The fact that it's Google, and not a live customer, hints that there's something in your .htaccess or in the PHP code dealing specifically with search engine bots. Maybe the SEO add-on is doing that? I would take this up in the support area for the SEO add-on you're using, as that is most likely at the heart of it.

Note that either an .htaccess RewriteRule or a PHP header("Location: call will by default give you a 302 code if it includes the http://domainname. If it just has a path and filename, I think it does a 200 by default (or you can override the 302 with an explicit 200 code... can't remember at the moment which is needed).

thanks for looking into this

i use USU5 from FWR Media plus some other security contributions. FWR Media say this does not have anything to do with their code.

probably i will have to disinstall all thse contribution to see what happens

[ironMIKE]

What you're seeing here is that google bot follows your "add to cart" link.
Since the bot does not transmit any cookies and should not get a session id google bot is treated like a customer and gets redirected to the "cookies" page.

As google "sees" hundreds of useless links that it has to follow, I would recommend you to fix this asap. It will result in more crawling capacity for new products and changes on your site.
I did not see a currencies box on your page, if you only offer your products in Pounds, remove the other currencies in the osC-admin

My recommendation:
Go to your webmaster account
Site configuration => Settings => Parameter handling

Use
+ Add parameter

to add the following parameters with Action "ignore":
action
currency

[valerif]

ironMIKE, on 29 October 2010, 16:42, said:

What you're seeing here is that google bot follows your "add to cart" link.
Since the bot does not transmit any cookies and should not get a session id google bot is treated like a customer and gets redirected to the "cookies" page.

As google "sees" hundreds of useless links that it has to follow, I would recommend you to fix this asap. It will result in more crawling capacity for new products and changes on your site.
I did not see a currencies box on your page, if you only offer your products in Pounds, remove the other currencies in the osC-admin

My recommendation:
Go to your webmaster account
Site configuration => Settings => Parameter handling

Use
+ Add parameter

to add the following parameters with Action "ignore":
action
currency

mike,

thank you for the advise. i already implemented the "ignore" currencies addition to the parameter a week or so ago

on the other hand i do use currencies but wornder why. in fact tey are not much needed except that people from usd and euro base countries to find easier way of understanding the prices of the products

i can also add a simple currency converter or so on each product page to resolve the issue

i noticed a lot of the pages within this soft 404s are PR meaning created following the links view or create review

in fact i totally disabled the revivew part of the site since i do not use it at all

thanks again foyour advise

valerif