spooks Posted February 8, 2010 Author Share Posted February 8, 2010 product_info.php?cPath=0_26&products_id=123 and it should be: product_info.php?cPath=31_26&products_id=123 Google must have found that link sometime, but I should worry not, as the canonical will mean google will soon realise what the link should be & remove the invalid. Some here have reported cases of competitiors generating bad links for sites in an effort to drop a sites rank, but again with that tacktic this will correct the link & reverse that attack. Remember also this only removes param's from the uri, it does not modify them. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigergirl Posted February 8, 2010 Share Posted February 8, 2010 Google must have found that link sometime, but I should worry not, as the canonical will mean google will soon realise what the link should be & remove the invalid. Remember also this only removes param's from the uri, it does not modify them. Sam, I think it's the sitemap SEO on the product pages, sorry. I will go ask Jack. Bother, serves me right for not sticking to my principle of changing one thing at a time! But, in who's online, when google comes to see me, it will show the full url (not the canonical) is that correct? Quote I'm feeling lucky today......maybe someone will answer my post! I do try and answer a simple post when I can just to give something back. ------------------------------------------------ PM me? - I'm not for hire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted February 8, 2010 Author Share Posted February 8, 2010 But, in who's online, when google comes to see me, it will show the full url (not the canonical) is that correct? yes, this creates the canonical, it does nothing else, it cannot change any links used. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigergirl Posted February 8, 2010 Share Posted February 8, 2010 yes, this creates the canonical, it does nothing else, it cannot change any links used. ok, cool, well it's a good job I had this installed before the sitemap went live or I'd be in more trouble than I am now :thumbsup: thanks again Quote I'm feeling lucky today......maybe someone will answer my post! I do try and answer a simple post when I can just to give something back. ------------------------------------------------ PM me? - I'm not for hire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longhorn1999 Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Hi Sam, I'm having the canonical issue of www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite/com/index.php having duplicate title and meta description tags according to Google Webmaster Tools. I'm a bit confused as to my options to resolve this kind of problem. Should I edit FILENAME_DEFAULT everywhere as some people in this forum have done?: http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=155079 Or I see in the installation notes for this add-on that you mention the problem I have, giving these instructions: Its possible the you will get a duplicate content issue with my-domain.com & my-domain.com/index.php as these are one & the same page, you can use .htacces to deal with this: RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.my-domain.com/ [R=301,L] That is normally sufficient, however on some servers there can still be an issue, if so enable removal of index.php from the uri by setting $rem_index to true in the code. But going back to Robert's reference to Matt Cutts' advice, does using a redirect cause any SEO problems? Or is this the appropriate course of action? Thanks for the advice, Nick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted February 25, 2010 Author Share Posted February 25, 2010 (edited) But going back to Robert's reference to Matt Cutts' advice, does using a redirect cause any SEO problems? Or is this the appropriate course of action? Where you have duplicate content a redirect is appropriate, changing FILENAME_DEFAULT can create new issues depending on your site, most common being Unable to determine the page link! errors on some links. Remember the canonical is still efectivly a redirect. Personally I always use that htaccess snipit to avoid an issue. Edited February 25, 2010 by spooks Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longhorn1999 Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 Where you have duplicate content a redirect is appropriate, changing FILENAME_DEFAULT can create new issues depending on your site, most common being Unable to determine the page link! errors on some links. Remember the canonical is still efectivly a redirect. Personally I always use that htaccess snipit to avoid an issue. Ok...good to know. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
safc Posted March 9, 2010 Share Posted March 9, 2010 Apologies if this has been asked before - I have searched but not found an answer. I tried to implement this code today but have the following issue. If my url is, for example, http://www.mysite.co.uk/catalog/product-name-c-10_100.html'>http://www.mysite.co.uk/catalog/product-name-c-10_100.html the canonical tag is being written as http://www.mysite.co.uk/catalog/product-name-c-10 100.html and this of course causes issues - but I can't see (in the code) why the '_' is being replaced with a space. Can you help please? Many Thanks Stuart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted March 9, 2010 Author Share Posted March 9, 2010 There is nothing in the code to do that, it does not search for the underscore & it does not replace anything with a space, you have some other code doing that. What seo package are you using, underscore's are rarely used for param seperators due to the issues that can occur as osc filnames contain underscores, usually only dashes are used. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
safc Posted March 9, 2010 Share Posted March 9, 2010 Sam you're correct - my issue was with a change I had made to the SEO code (and not noticed the error). I saw the error after adding your contribution and did a 2+2=5! Many thanks and thanks for sharing your code Stuart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephan Gebbers Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 (edited) Can you help me with this? It seems when there are %20 (spaces) or similar within the links, as in OVRAW etc. hxxp://www.website.com/index.php?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&utm_content=7777777777&utm_campaign=666666666&OVRAW=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVKEY=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=1111111111&OVKWID=22222222222&OVCAMPGID=44444444444&OVADGRPID=5555555555 this values will not be removed completely <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/index.php?%20live%20points%20kaufen%20live%20points%20kaufen%20live%20points%20kaufen" > Regards, Stephan Edited March 20, 2010 by Stephan Gebbers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted March 20, 2010 Author Share Posted March 20, 2010 Can you help me with this? It seems when there are %20 (spaces) or similar within the links, as in OVRAW etc. hxxp://www.website.com/index.php?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&utm_content=7777777777&utm_campaign=666666666&OVRAW=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVKEY=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=1111111111&OVKWID=22222222222&OVCAMPGID=44444444444&OVADGRPID=5555555555 this values will not be removed completely <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/index.php?%20live%20points%20kaufen%20live%20points%20kaufen%20live%20points%20kaufen" > Regards, Stephan You have something else doing that, not this, perhaps some seo add-on, if I put your uri into my test site the result is: <link rel="canonical" href="http:/ /my_site.co.uk/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&utm_content=7777777777&utm_campaign=666666666&OVRAW=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVKEY=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=1111111111&OVKWID=22222222222&OVCAMPGID=44444444444&OVADGRPID=5555555555" > ie as expected, the code does not look for %20 or vary output on content, it removes requested params only & looks for standard & seo seperators only. perhaps u made an error adding to the removed list, what have u added exactly. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephan Gebbers Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 (edited) You have something else doing that, not this, perhaps some seo add-on, if I put your uri into my test site the result is: <link rel="canonical" href="http:/ /my_site.co.uk/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&utm_content=7777777777&utm_campaign=666666666&OVRAW=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVKEY=xbox%20live%20points%20kaufen&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=1111111111&OVKWID=22222222222&OVCAMPGID=44444444444&OVADGRPID=5555555555" > ie as expected, the code does not look for %20 or vary output on content, it removes requested params only & looks for standard & seo seperators only. perhaps u made an error adding to the removed list, what have u added exactly. $remove_array = array('OVRAW', 'OVADGRPID', 'OVCAMPGID', 'OVKEY', 'OVMTC', 'OVKWID', 'OVADID', 'utm_content', 'utm_term', 'utm_source', 'utm_medium', 'utm_campaign', 'action', 'gclid', 'currency','language','main_page','page','sort','ref','affiliate_banner_id','max'); I have "Ultimate seo urls 5 r141 stable" installed Currently i'm using a workaround.. In html_output.php, right before the definition of $remove_array $request_uri = preg_replace("([^a-zA-Z0-9äöüÄÖÜ\/\-\.\=\?\&\_])", "", $request_uri); Regards, Stephan PS: have you tested the string "xbox live points kaufen" with actual spaces instead of %20 too? Edited March 21, 2010 by Stephan Gebbers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted March 21, 2010 Author Share Posted March 21, 2010 spaces in uri Hi, yes there is an issue, I should have checked more thoughly This should fix the isssue replace: $search[] = '/&*' . $value . '[=\/]+\w*\/?/i'; with: $search[] = '/&*' . $value . '[=\/]+[\w%..\+]*\/?/i'; Let me know how you get on. PS Are you aware spaces should be avoided with uri where ever possible, they are considered 'unsafe' due to indeterminate behaviour. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephan Gebbers Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 Ok, thanks. Thats better now. Well, Yahoo is sending the search query parameter string with plain spaces. Regards, Stephan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotclutch Posted April 1, 2010 Share Posted April 1, 2010 Hi Sam Is it possible to have an exclusion array just for the category pages? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted April 1, 2010 Author Share Posted April 1, 2010 Is it possible to have an exclusion array just for the category pages? category pages are listed within index.php, an empty array already exists in the code, just add to that. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotclutch Posted April 1, 2010 Share Posted April 1, 2010 category pages are listed within index.php, an empty array already exists in the code, just add to that. Sorry, I missed that! Works great, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peper Posted April 8, 2010 Share Posted April 8, 2010 Hi Sam I see Google webmaster tools reports a lot of duplicate mete descriptions and title tags after I waited for Google to update my site content: They are all similar links(conical)like the following: e.g. Title tags: index.php?cPath=46_61 and index.php?cPath=61 meta dexcriptions: /product_info.php?cPath=84&products_id=256 /product_info.php?cPath=79&products_id=256 Ends up the on same page though Do we need to insert #redirect index.php to root RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301,L] into the .htaccess file Is there something I must correct and change? Thanks Quote Getting the Phoenix off the ground Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OFS Posted April 8, 2010 Share Posted April 8, 2010 Yes sure. What has to be remembered is that canonical tags are not the holy grail, very useful to be sure but not good for everything. canonical tags are effectively to the bots a soft 301 redirect. So if you take split page results pages (a typical duplicate content example) . . adding a canonical tag where there is e.g. page and sort in the querystring informs the bots that this is a non page and that only the main page is the canonical version .. this in turn means that the links on those pages will not be followed possibly leading to those products not being indexed. So look at what we actually want from these pages .. we don't want them indexed as they are "non pages" with no true content nor meaning .. we do however want the bots to follow the links and index the pages they find .. so .. in comes the .. <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" /> It does exactly this .. tells the bots not to index the page but to follow the links and index those it finds .. perfect! Hi Sam, With the above points in mind I am wanting to make a slight tweak to your contrbution so that when your on a split page results page it shows this echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">' . "\n"; Instead of the canonical link. I've tried having a go at this but had no joy. I use a header tags contibution so i was thinking where i put "CanonicalLink( $xhtml = false, 'SSL' );" i could add an if else statement like this: If on split page results page echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">' . "\n"; } else { CanonicalLink( $xhtml = false, 'SSL' ); I just can't work out what to put in that "if" statement so the system knows i'm on a split page results page. Could you offer any guidence on this please mate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted April 9, 2010 Author Share Posted April 9, 2010 meta dexcriptions: /product_info.php?cPath=84&products_id=256 /product_info.php?cPath=79&products_id=256 cpath is removed from the uri for product_info.php in the default setup Title tags:index.php?cPath=46_61 and index.php?cPath=61 That says you have multiple paths to sub categories on your site, it would require some code additions to address that, as param values are not touched. Peper 1 Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted April 9, 2010 Author Share Posted April 9, 2010 I am yet to be convinced there is any issue that needs addressing, the canonical does not say 'do not visit these pages' nor does it say 'do not follow links' it just says 'this is the page that should appear in the index. Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peper Posted April 9, 2010 Share Posted April 9, 2010 Thanks for reply Umm.. a bit confused now cpath is removed from the uri for product_info.php in the default setup That says you have multiple paths to sub categories on your site, it would require some code additions to address that, as param values are not touched. Where do I start and what to look for in code? :o Quote Getting the Phoenix off the ground Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spooks Posted April 9, 2010 Author Share Posted April 9, 2010 Where do I start and what to look for in code? do you know php & how to create a regex expression? the current category id is set in $current_category_id so u must search the uri for cpath & if there modify its param with $current_category_id I will update the code when I`ve time to look at this, but its only a minor issue so its not high on my to do list. Peper 1 Quote Sam Remember, What you think I ment may not be what I thought I ment when I said it. Contributions: Auto Backup your Database, Easy way Multi Images with Fancy Pop-ups, Easy way Products in columns with multi buy etc etc Disable any Category or Product, Easy way Secure & Improve your account pages et al. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peper Posted April 10, 2010 Share Posted April 10, 2010 do you know php & how to create a regex expression? If I see the code I know sort of what it's supposed to do Lets leave it till update is available The main reason for posting is that only my homepage is ranked at 2, all keywords and descriptions is formed correct for the products but no rank Not really worried much at this stage, my shop is showing along my competitors but obvious the top would be no1 :thumbsup: Quote Getting the Phoenix off the ground Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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