Tackling Potential Content Duplication Issues in Your WebStore

WebStore
62

Hi @franclin_foping, question for you regarding our implementation of the canonical tags:

We’re using the latest version of your code from your original post, but we’re still seeing unexpected results:

Example URL: http://www.racksforcars.com/Rack-Systems/Rhino-Fit-Kits/?page=3

Output:

`

`

The “prev” link is dropping the subcategory of the URL and is also in the wrong URL format (resulting in a 404). The “next” link is in the correct URL format, but it’s also dropping the subcategory from the URL.

Any fix for this?

Thanks very much,

Tyler

63

Hi @tylerkrys

Thanks for reporting that to us. This is yet another edge case and we will fix it.

Kindest regards,

Franclin

64

Much appreciated Franclin!

65

Hi @tylerkrys and @emma

A fix has been released for your respective issues.

Please let us know your feedback.

Thanks a lot for your patience.

Kindest regards,
Franclin

66

Working exactly as expected now @franclin_foping, thanks so much for looking after that!

67

Thanks for your feedback @tylerkrys, very much appreciated!

68

Hi @franclin_foping,

Have you made some changes to this only the canonicalization tags for departments don’t seem to be working correctly any more
eg on this page http://www.broughtons.com/store/department/2/door-furniture/page6.html it has

link rel=“prev” href=“http://www.broughtons.com/store/department/2/door-furniture/page5.html”/
link rel=“next” href=“http://www.broughtons.com/store/department/2/door-furniture/page6.html”/
link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.broughtons.com/store/department/2/door-furniture/page6.html”/

The “next” tag value should be Page 7

It looks ok on categories and subcategories though.

Emma

69

Hi @emma

Thanks for reporting that to us.

I will double check and get back to you asap.

Regards,
Franclin

70

Hi @franclin_foping,

Our canonical tags are working great on department and category pages, but the prev tag breaks on our brand pages on page 2 of results.

Example page: http://www.racksforcars.com/THULE/?page=2

Expected canonical tags:

`

`

Actual canonical tags:

`

`

This isn’t a problem on pages 3, 4, 5, etc. Those seem to create the correct prev URL fine.

Thanks very much,

Tyler

71

Hi,

An update here:

  • @tylerkrys we have just released a fix for the issue that you reported and having double checked, we are satisfied with the results;

  • @emma there is also a fix for your issue and you should be good to go.

Once more, thanks for bringing those issues to our attention.

Regards,
Franclin

P.S: @emma congratulations for lifting the title from a Chelsea fan!

72

That looks perfect @franclin_foping, thanks so much for the quick fix!

73

Hi @franclin_foping,

I’m just investigating possible causes why google has a bit of a downer on us at the moment, and spotted that some of these bugs are back in our live site, examples below:

Brand pages:

Page 1 of a brand does not have the correct URL for the “next” page eg look at http://www.broughtons.com/store/search/brand/elstead-lighting/

  • the brand name itself is missing.

Category Pages:
The link for the “next” url is wrong on Page 1 eg look at http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/28/250/door-handles-on-backplate/
and also on a middle page “next” is wrong eg look at http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/28/250/door-handles-on-backplate/page6.html

Subcategory Pages:
The link for the “next” url is wrong on Page 1 eg look at http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/28/250/Door-Handles-on-Backplate/Polished-Brass/
and also on a middle page “next” is wrong eg look at http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/28/250/Door-Handles-on-Backplate/Polished-Brass/page2.html

And where google searches for pages that are out of scope and the site is supposed to return a 404, it returns an empty results set instead - and with prev and next references too! eg
http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/28/250/door-handles-on-backplate/page9999.html
and http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/28/250/Door-Handles-on-Backplate/Polished-Brass/page9999.html

Thanks,
Emma

74

Hi @emma

Thanks for reporting this issue to us.

I will double check that and let you know when a fix is released.

Watch out this space in the meantime.

Regards,
Franclin

75

Hi @franclin_foping,

Can I add another related use case where google is reporting crawl errors because the page does not exist yet doesn’t return a 404…

Its when it crawls a subcategory that doesn’t exist - it should return a 404 eg it crawls http://www.broughtons.com/store/category/13/100/Wall-Lights/Period/

Thanks,
Emma

76

Hi @emma

Thanks for letting us know. We will also look at this issue and get back to you in due course.

Regards,
Franclin

77

Interesting you should bring that up Emma. Our Webmaster tools is reporting an increased number of crawl errors last week, thousands of them in fact for pages which haven’t existed in a long time. Perhaps this is related to what you’ve highlighted.

78

On the subject of having too many and wrong indexed pages, can I raise the following as a potential cause of concern too:

Google still indexes thousands of our pages with URL formats from before we turned on SEO normalization last year. How will google EVER drop these pages - they don’t render the normalized version AND their canonical refs are themselves not the normalized version. Therefore google indexes both the unnormalized and normalized version of a page, both of which serve identical content. Surely google will conclude we have loads of duplicate content therefore. Example here:

site:www.broughtons.com/store/search/brand/kirkpatrick-ironmongery/ (choose to search without omitting similar entries) and you see it indexes both
www.broughtons.com/store/search/brand/kirkpatrick-ironmongery/
and
www.broughtons.com/store/search/brand/Kirkpatrick-Ironmongery/

What do you think @franclin_foping?

Emma

79

Hi @emma

We have just released a set of patches for the issues that you raised.

The next URL is now correct in your brand/category/subcategary pages and we also return a 404 on listing pages without items.

With regards to the content duplication occurring when the URL normalization is enabled, Google was indexing both pages because the contents of their URLs were similar. The way around it is to send a 301 to the correct version of the page. For instance, for www.broughtons.com/store/search/brand/kirkpatrick-ironmongery/ and www.broughtons.com/store/search/brand/Kirkpatrick-Ironmongery/ since the former is the correct version, opening the latter URL would yield a 301 to the former.

In fact, this mechanism is already in place for retailers not using legacy URLs. Mind you, it may take some time before search engines reindex your store and at that point, I do expect to see a sharp reduction in the number of crawl errors.

Once again, I would like to seize this opportunity to thank you for reporting this issue to us.

Hope this helps.
Franclin

80

Hi @franclin_foping,

That would be great news - only now our customers cannot navigate beyond page 1 of a brand page! When you try and select page 2, page 3 etc it just returns page 1.

Please can you look at urgently.

Emma

81

Hi @emma

We have just fixed that for you.

Thanks,
Franclin