SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by CamboKev » Fri Sep 30, 2011 5:36 pm

Hi

OC clean install, v1.5.1, couple of VQMods http://www.vintageheirloom.com

Many posts about this, references to canonical, and that OC does this by default.

However in my GoogleMaster I get 133 dup titles and 102 dup meta descriptions. Looks like the sort functionality...

My duplicate titles:

Image

My duplicate meta descriptions:

Image

Is this area 'URL Solutions' in GMaster the solution? Bit frightened of messing around here! :-\

Image

Any help, would as ever be gratefully accepted.

OC rules.. ;D
Last edited by CamboKev on Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why.

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Re: Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by uksitebuilder » Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:35 pm

Some of those reported are from an old store me thinks ? oscommerce or similar

Have you got a robots.txt file?
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Re: Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by CamboKev » Fri Sep 30, 2011 7:20 pm

Hi Simon

Thanks for replying.

I did have an oscommerce site previous to OC but the url was something like: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/catalog....

The duplicate titles and meta tags are http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.php?.... which looks to me like OC

???

Robot.txt file here. I've commented out the duplicate sitemap provided by my host 'Hostgator' thought it might conflict, but guessing really:

user-agent: *
Disallow: /*&limit
Disallow: /*&sort
Disallow: /*?route=checkout/
Disallow: /*?route=account/
Disallow: /*?route=product/search
Disallow: /*?route=affiliate/

Sitemap: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.ph ... le_sitemap

# duplicate may affect SEO? sitemap: http://cdn.attracta.com/sitemap/912892.xml.gz


Cheers!

It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why.

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Re: Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by uksitebuilder » Fri Sep 30, 2011 7:33 pm

I was look at the URL Parameters which has cPath (oscommerce variable)

Your robots.txt looks fine, but robots are are like children, they dont always do what you tell them.

seems most if not all of your duplicates are related to categories.

Personally I have added a canonical url to my category pages which should cut out any dupe content that results from pagination and sort ordering.

Because you have your robots.txt set-up, you can ask google to remove those duplicate links (alas its a one by one process)

Attached is my canonical URL vqmod file that adds a canonical url to the category pages.

That other sitemap seems to relate to oscommerce, so good idea to remove it

Attachments

uksb_canonical_category_link.xml Downloaded 1305 times

Download - 569 Bytes

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SOLVED - Re: Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by CamboKev » Fri Sep 30, 2011 7:54 pm

Thanks for all your help Simon. I've added the VQMod and I'll keep an eye on the duplicates. I'm sure it'll help.

Check out your Paypal. Hope you have time to enjoy a pint or three... :)

Cheers

It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why.

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Re: Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by uksitebuilder » Fri Sep 30, 2011 7:57 pm

Cheers Kev, appreciate it.
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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by stonehinged » Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:11 am

I have a similar situation with my store. With my robots file I have disallowed the "sort" parameter.

Disallow: /*?sort
Disallow: /*&sort

I'm mostly concerned with the "page" parameter. i.e. ?page=2

I don't want to add this to my robots as each page has unique product and content on it so I want the search engines to index all these pages. But currently each "page" has the exact same title and meta data. Is there any way to make this unique for each page? I'm on an older version of OC (1.4.7) but I'm hoping there's a solution.

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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by storm-cloud » Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:19 pm

stonehinged, I was just thinking the exact same thing...

uksitebuilder, this whole php environment is quite new to me, so excuse any questions that may seem obvious. I was wondering if using your canonical vqmod would effectively mean that search engines will not discover content on additional category pages?

Edit: I just gave your canonical tag vqmod a try and it didn't seem to work correctly. I viewed a number of category pages and the canonical tag was present only a couple of times.

I even went back to the same category page where it previously showed and then the tag was not present. Does it matter which vqmod I have installed? I have downloaded and installed vqmod v2.1.5.
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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by storm-cloud » Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:52 pm

uksitebuilder, I just worked out where the issue was. Just looked at your code for the vQmod and could see that it is dependant on the meta keywords tag to be present in order for the canonical tag to work.

I am still not sure about the effect it would have on categories containing multiple pages though. Any thoughts?
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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by amit_sr » Tue May 29, 2012 1:17 am

hi Simon,
i have put all ur three Vqmods for cannonical categories, products and manufacturers....i am new to website designing and SEO, so please tell me if these are going to help me in showing two or three different URLs in Google webmaters tools for the products pages because i have many pages with duplicate meta titles and meta descriptions which are basically the same pages....

Thanks

Cool Bean Bags India
Bean Bags Online

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Re: Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by storm-cloud » Fri Jun 15, 2012 10:50 pm

uksitebuilder wrote:Attached is my canonical URL vqmod file that adds a canonical url to the category pages.
Please excuse me for digging up this old post, but I am looking for a way to include a canonical tag on the category pages that will always show the deepest level URL.

For example, if I visit http://www.yoursite.com.au/cat-1/cat-2/cat-3 the canonical will show as http://www.yoursite.com.au/cat-1/cat-2/cat-3.

However, if I visit http://www.yoursite.com.au/cat-3, the canonical tag will still show as http://www.yoursite.com.au/cat-1/cat-2/cat-3.

I would like to ensure that full page hierarchy is maintained in Google's eyes and also when visitors land on the site from the search results that they are presented with the complete breadcrumb path. With your current vQmod, the canonical tag is resolved to the root level for the category.

One of the other reasons I need this is because I have already used your current vQmod and all categories have been indexed at root level. So the only way to reverse this would be to add a vQmod that performs as outlined above otherwise the changes will never be noticed by Google. I probably should have simply not used a canonical tag for the categories in the first place but now that I have, this is the only way I can think of to force the changes I would prefer.

I know there is a way to achieve this as I found an OpenCart site that has this implemented. I contacted the owner but no reply. :(

Any ideas?
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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by stonehinged » Wed Jul 18, 2012 10:26 am

Simon,

on this line of your canonical category vQmod:

Code: Select all

$this->document->addLink($this->url->link('product/category', 'path=' . $category_id), 'canonical');
Do you have any idea how this would be changed so that I can capture the pagination URL?

I want to canonicalize each page like this:

http://www.mysite.com/category
http://www.mysite.com/category?page=2
http://www.mysite.com/category?page=3
http://www.mysite.com/category?page=4
etc.

I do not want to canonicalize page=1 obviously as that is a duplicate.

Ideas?

Further reading: http://searchengineland.com/implementin ... gle-114970 under the section "Using the Canonical Attribute in Conjunction with the Pagination Attributes"

Thanks!

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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by stonehinged » Wed Jul 25, 2012 12:31 am

If anyone is interested, I kluged something together that works to solution my request above. I'm sure it can be programmed more efficiently and correctly than this, but it works.

Code: Select all

if ($this->document != NULL && $page > 1) $this->document->addLink($this->url->link('product/category', 'path=' . $category_id . '&page=' . $page), 'canonical');
			if ($this->document != NULL && $page == 1) $this->document->addLink($this->url->link('product/category', 'path=' . $category_id), 'canonical');
This will produce a canonical URL for each of the paginated result pages. Again, I prefer search engines index each of my result pages (not just page 1) since each page has unique product.

Quick note: I disallow the sorting and limits parameters in my robots.txt file as this is the same product viewed different ways.

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Re: SOLVED - Duplicate Title and Meta Tags OC v1.5.1

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Post by khnaz35 » Thu Aug 30, 2018 11:21 pm

stonehinged wrote: ↑
Wed Jul 25, 2012 12:31 am
 If anyone is interested, I kluged something together that works to solution my request above. I'm sure it can be programmed more efficiently and correctly than this, but it works.

Code: Select all

if ($this->document != NULL && $page > 1) $this->document->addLink($this->url->link('product/category', 'path=' . $category_id . '&page=' . $page), 'canonical');
			if ($this->document != NULL && $page == 1) $this->document->addLink($this->url->link('product/category', 'path=' . $category_id), 'canonical');
This will produce a canonical URL for each of the paginated result pages. Again, I prefer search engines index each of my result pages (not just page 1) since each page has unique product.

Quick note: I disallow the sorting and limits parameters in my robots.txt file as this is the same product viewed different ways.

IS this code works for OC 2.3.0.2

Got an urgent question that’s keeping you up at night? There might just be a magical inbox ready to help: khnaz35@gmail.com
Enjoy nature ;) :) :-*

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