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Permanent language parameter in all links and sitemaps


eyal_barouk

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Hi,

I have a Multilanguage store (hebrew,english,arabic - soon) with two big problems.

1.The site always reverts back to the English language. I can start with Hebrew on a such as:

http://www.my_store.com/catalog/index.php?language=en

but when clicking a category link the path changes to:

http://www.my_store.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=1

At this point the language is still Hebrew, but if I wait for a while an hit "Refresh" the store will jump back to English, regardless of Default language settings.

2.

As a result of 1. wouldn't that cause me trouble with google indexing? - If a page will always be indexed without the ?language= parameter Customers will never be able to reach my Hebrew or Arabic pages directly from the google search.

3.

I guess this is also true for sitemaps. I have tried the google XML siute map but I understand that it doesn't produce the language parameter too (I created the special language xml file manually based on the xml sitemap ).

So:

I would like to display all links with the language parameter, no matter where:

http://www.my_store.com/catalog/index.php?...amp;language=he

 

I can't believe this wasn't mention before but I have been looking and looking and couldn't find the right answer/contribution.

 

Please, can anyone advise?

Eyal

How About an Open Source Car?

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Please, anyone?

Is this question too stupid? too obvious? been asked so many times that no one has the patience to go over it again?

Going desperate here. After all this hard work on my store and the endless installations, I have ended up with pathetic Google results if any. My Hebrew and Arabic pages doesn't get indexed at all and I'm loosing business by the hour.

Thanks for reading,

Eyal

How About an Open Source Car?

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Finally an answer for my puzzle:

At the moment no .. the default set up of osCommerce is really not set up for the individual indexing of multi languages.

No wonder no one wanted to answer.

And I thought my topic was stupid and that the answer will be, "what, are you kidding, of course it can be done! ..."

What a nightmare! So osCommerce is not really multilingual. It's an English shop that can be translated into other languages, which will never be indexed if English is present.

 

I actually feel like taking the whole thing and throw it in the trash - including my computer, profession and self. I have spent the last 3 month installing osC with many features and contributions, only to find that I have no use for it, and that my business logic - a shop which serves customers of different languages - wow! what an extreme demand from an online shop - cannot be applied.

Sorry for all the sarcasm but I am so disappointed, I truly want to cry.

yours,

Eyal

How About an Open Source Car?

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Why can't you just generate three site maps? One for each language, with the appropriate URLs? The search spider will keep switching back to the default language (which could be Hebrew rather than English), but that won't matter if it indexes all your products first.

 

The problem where it switches languages is mostly likely based on your browser preferences. The shop tries to provide your browser language. You have to explicitly override it (by clicking an alternate language link). If you wait long enough, your session expires and it forgets that you set another language and goes back to your default. This is bad for you during testing, but it should not impact customers as much -- presumably they will have their browsers set to display in the language in which they want to read.

Always back up before making changes.

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Why can't you just generate three site maps? One for each language, with the appropriate URLs?

 

hi ecartz,

I did create three sitemaps, one for each language. I just didn't realize that it is sufficient for the Google indexing. That's good news! I have always thought sitemaps are just somthing nice to have, and that the real indexing is produced by the crawler, that will never reach my Hebrew, Arabic pages on it own account unless finding me through a referring site.

If so, I have overreacted, (as usual :-))

 

My rank is still dreadful. I thought this might be the reason.

 

Thank you so much for clarifying this for me.

Eyal

Eyal

How About an Open Source Car?

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