Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Canonical Redirect Conundrum

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Canonical Redirect Conundrum

    A bit of backstory is needed to hopefully clarify. I have a site that sells from its category pages (and has done it that way successfully for years). There hadn't been any accessible links to the products until about 7 months ago. Then it was decided to link to the product pages even though they were void of good content (the intention was to build out the info). Then an SEO company got involved and didn't think the empty pages would be beneficial and requested these pages be 301 redirected back to the category. I figured that using the built-in URI Management would be the best way to go. In hindsight, it may have been a huge mistake. When the built-in URI Management redirects, it deletes what was seen as the product canonical. When that happens, the product links revert back to the old long-style links. Then when the site gets spidered for a sitemap or by Google it picks up the long style links. Of course, that has driven the SEO company nuts because it was finding both short and long links in Google instead of all the short style links. The real problem becomes the inability for the redirect to truly work as it was intended. With the short-style links no longer being found what is the point of the redirect? In the meantime, the only way to keep Google from finding the long-style links was to put a noindex in place.

    Is there no way to keep the short links and redirect them without writing a massive .htaccess file?
    Leslie Kirk
    Miva Certified Developer
    Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
    Previously of Webs Your Way
    (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

    Email me: [email protected]
    www.lesliekirk.com

    Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

    #2
    There is an htaccess disallow crawl directive. Perhaps you can add that as a pattern redirect (so it'd only be several lines) to tell robots not to crawl pages with /merchant.mvc?

    Maybe david knows the actual code needed. I've just done it for directories i.e.,


    User-Agent: *
    Disallow:
    /phplive/
    Disallow: /dev/
    Disallow: /scotmail/
    Disallow: /worksite/
    Disallow: /Merchant5
    Bruce Golub
    Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

    Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
    phosphormedia.com

    Comment


      #3
      That looks like robots.txt format vs htaccess, but in general any and all htaccess usage is discouraged at this point as rewrites outside of URI management will make a store ineligible to migrate into the next generation of our platform infrastructure, since it does not utilize apache. The URI management rewrites will be handled in an equivalent manner. robots.txt would be fine if that can resolve the issue given it's just static content.

      If something is producing long format links in the page content, perhaps that's something which can be resolved at the template level? If you have a series of real URI (fine to replace identifying bits with made up variables) examples and what's been put into URI management, and their settings, I can try to get someone with more knowledge in that area to chime in.
      David Hubbard
      CIO
      Miva
      [email protected]
      http://www.miva.com

      Comment


        #4
        yea, sorry...still have a vaccine hangover headache...that is a robots.txt
        Bruce Golub
        Phosphor Media - "Your Success is our Business"

        Improve Your Customer Service | Get MORE Customers | Edit CSS/Javascript/HTML Easily | Make Your Site Faster | Get Indexed by Google | Free Modules | Follow Us on Facebook
        phosphormedia.com

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by ILoveHostasaurus View Post
          That looks like robots.txt format vs htaccess, but in general any and all htaccess usage is discouraged at this point as rewrites outside of URI management will make a store ineligible to migrate into the next generation of our platform infrastructure, since it does not utilize apache. The URI management rewrites will be handled in an equivalent manner. robots.txt would be fine if that can resolve the issue given it's just static content.

          If something is producing long format links in the page content, perhaps that's something which can be resolved at the template level? If you have a series of real URI (fine to replace identifying bits with made up variables) examples and what's been put into URI management, and their settings, I can try to get someone with more knowledge in that area to chime in.
          Hey David Hostasaurus I am working with two sites that both are having the same issue. When a product is discontinued the URI Management 301 Redirect to Canonical feature has been used. The product URI is redirected to the category code. It all looks great on the surface until along comes a spider. The old long style link gets picked up. In the second site it's showing up in their sitemap.xml file (I have to find out what the second site is using to create the sitemap file and try to maybe block/stop it). In the mean time products that should not be accessible are because they have to remain active for the URI Management to work (or at least that is how I have understood it for all these years).

          You mention something that can be resolved at the template level - I don't think so. But I have started testing out using an "inactive" category and assigning these product to it. Is that going to be the only way to prevent the spiders from finding these products? Or is that only going to make it worse?


          Leslie Kirk
          Miva Certified Developer
          Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
          Previously of Webs Your Way
          (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

          Email me: [email protected]
          www.lesliekirk.com

          Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

          Comment


            #6
            Also if using the built-in Marketing > Feeds it picks up the old style link since there isn't a canonical URI. How can that be prevented?
            Leslie Kirk
            Miva Certified Developer
            Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
            Previously of Webs Your Way
            (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

            Email me: [email protected]
            www.lesliekirk.com

            Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

            Comment


              #7
              I think I figured out where the problem is coming from - the ReadyTheme navigation still has a link to the category. Since there is no longer a short style link, it becomes the old long style link. I have solved the problem by changing the category link to the new one.
              Leslie Kirk
              Miva Certified Developer
              Miva Merchant Specialist since 1997
              Previously of Webs Your Way
              (aka Leslie Nord leslienord)

              Email me: [email protected]
              www.lesliekirk.com

              Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | FourSquare | Pinterest | Flickr

              Comment

              Working...
              X