A way to prevent duplicate links when...
Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Customizing ProductCart
Forum Description: Exchange messages with other users that are customizing ProductCart.
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3281
Printed Date: 20-May-2024 at 2:57am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: A way to prevent duplicate links when...
Posted By: Brett
Subject: A way to prevent duplicate links when...
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 8:09pm
A way to prevent duplicate links when products are in multiple categories.
I noticed that my keyword-rich links are being duplicated because some of my products are contained in more than one category.
The links it generates look something like this:
http://www.site.com/store/pc/key-words-here-#p#####
The first # represents the category number, and the #'s following the "p" represent the product number.
I noticed that when I remove the first number, representing the category, the link still works just fine.
Can I modify the URL generation procedure to have it omit category numbers when generating product links, or will this mess something else up?
It seems easy enough, and very much supported, to be able to add products to multiple categories. It's a shame, however, that this causes links to be generated both in the sitemap, and on the site.
This can't be good for search engine ranking.
*edit*
I'm sure there's a way to bypass the redirect method of keyword optimization all together. I wouldn't mind knowing what that is, if anyone has an idea. The cleaner the better with links, as far as I'm concerned. That being said, I still think removing the category number from generated URLs could be a way to reduce duplicate urls (leading to the same page) and improve search engine ranking.
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Replies:
Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 8:15pm
I've not studied the v4 implementation but I know for a fact that category number, or product number in the v3 product detail page display, is absolutely critical to the SEO mod working. Indeed, if nothing but the category appears in the URL it works. The name prior to the category is the one that can go away and have the system still work correctly.
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GreyBeard Design Group
Certified ProductCart Developer
Web Design/Development/Hosting
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 8:17pm
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Before you get too worked up over this, you may want to read this:
http://www.earlyimpact.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2879&KW=google&PID=12166#12166 - http://www.earlyimpact.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2879&KW=google&PID=12166#12166
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Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 8:28pm
I just removed the category portion of the product link and everything seems fine... What are the implications that I'm not noticing?
I was unable to remove the category number from the sitemap generation, but that can be prevented by omitting categories that you know to have duplicated items in them.
It's good to see that google isn't specifically penalizing people with duplicate content, but i'm not so much worried about them seeing me as someone trying to game the system.
I find it hard to believe that it's okay to point to the same page with many different links. Each of those pages, in google's eyes, would have different URLs. That means the hits to each page would appear less than if they all had the same name.
For example, I have a product t-shirt:
site.com/store/pc/t-shirt-5p123.html gets 50 hits a day
site.com/store/pc/t-shirt-3p123.html gets 50 hits a day
Now each of my pages appears to google to be receiving less hits, when in reality its one page with 100 hits.
Am I the only one who think this might matter?
*edit*
Great response time, btw. I dont run into too many issues and so I rarely post here, but when I do it doesnt take long to get some good advice. It's rare to find something like that.
*another edit*
"We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL."
Just read that on the page... Maybe it solves my problem, i don't know.
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Posted By: Brett
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 8:43pm
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I just checked my analytics and sure enough it's showing the same item as multiple pages with the views split among them. Hopefully the change I made will fix it. For anyone interested, it's in pcgenseolinks.asp around line 24. It's hard to miss.
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Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 9:52pm
The main implication is that ProductCart will not know exactly which category you are in. So the breadcrumb navigation might not be accurate ("might" because ProductCart still attempts to find the category that the product is in by loading the first category assignment it finds in the database).
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The ProductCart Team
Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11-December-2009 at 10:13pm
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D'oh! Just beat me to the punch.
Yeah, the issue is with the bread crumb navigation. To clarify, if a customer is shopping a certain category and clicks through to a product, ideally you'd want the bread crumb trail to take them back to that category they were just browsing (sort of like "contiue shopping").
Without that assignment, then for product assigned to multiple categories, then the only way PC and figure what category to put there in the bread crumbs would be the first category it happens to find that product assigned to.
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Posted By: MikeCC
Date Posted: 12-December-2009 at 4:00pm
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Yes, but you could regard that as academic for anyone that's landed on a product from a search page. Generally they will be looking for the product, not the category, so it won't really matter what the breadcrumb is as long as it shows a relevant category. It's only a problem if you put some products into a random category.
The main thing at that stage is they are on your site, so hopefully will browse if they want a related product.
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 12-December-2009 at 6:48pm
Another possible ramification, although I have not tested this, is for products that are in both a hidden and visible category. I suspect the display of a product may be blocked inadvertently by ProductCart having to "make an assumption" about the category.
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Editing ProductCart Code?
See http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/developers/editcode" rel="nofollow - WIKI Guidelines for Editing ProductCart's ASP Source Code
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