webmaster tools still lists duplicate urls

-- url of the page with the problem -- : www.gouri-gouri.com/home-charms/593-lucky-eye-christmas-charm
-- HikaShop version -- : 2.3.4
-- Joomla version -- : 2.5.28
-- PHP version -- : 5.4.34
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : safari

Hello,

I have been using canonicals for quite a long time but I see that WT, in some cases, lists the same product under the alias of other categories too. Should't that return 404? For instance, this is the product:

www.gouri-gouri.com/home-charms/593-lucky-eye-christmas-charm

and this is a duplicate which WT has somehow detected:

www.gouri-gouri.com/car-charms/593-lucky.../related_product-426

They both have had canonicals for a long time. Also they are NOT related!

Hi,

Please give us a screenshot of the products with id 593 and 426 settings.
For the related issue, please check the settings of the module with the id 89, it's maybe not properly configured.

Here they are:

Hi,

Could you provide backend access ? It will be easiest for us to find the origin of the issue.

You can send the informations via private messages or via our contact form.
Don't forget to give the url of that topic in the message.

Hi,

I indeed don't see from where come the second url. Isn't it an old one ?
When reaching the page with that url, we use the product canonical url, so we are able to reach the correct product page thanks to the id. In the source code of the page, you can see the rel="canonical" meta tag, with the correct url, so no issue for the SEO, it is using the correct url.

Hi Xavier,

Thanks for looking into it. I will watch it from now on to see what happens. But there is this issue which I don't know if it is normal. The following is a correct canonical:

www.gouri-gouri.com/home-charms/564-tree-good-luck-charm

I have noticed that I can reach this product through the alias of other categories too, e.g.:

www.gouri-gouri.com/earrings/564-tree-good-luck-charm

Is this supposed to happen?

Also, since first setting up hikashop the related items module (see screenshot above) has been unpublished but it still works normally! What difference would publishing make in this case?

Hi,

The fact that you can access the product page from different URLs is not a problem as long as you have a canonical URL set for the product.
So yes, that's normal.

Ok, thanks, I 'll monitor the situation to see what happens.

Also, since first setting up hikashop the related items module (see screenshot above) has been unpublished but it still works normally! What difference would publishing make in this case?

If you published it, your template would display the module in the position that you configure it via the joomla modules manager.
So it's normal that it is unpublished since HikaShop is displaying itself under the product page because you have it published in the "modules under the product page" option of the HikaShop configuration.

Ok, I have now been watching WT and this has just appeared:

This is the 'correct' page www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms
and WT has also somehow reached these duplicates which don't have the canonical in the source (and I hope are not getting listed)
www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms/produ...036-heart-luck-charm
www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms/produ.../related_product-434
www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms/produ.../related_product-435
www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms/produ...4e005nc-wreath-charm
www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms/product/434-g-4e005nc

Should I disallow crawling of www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms/product/* ?

Hi,

The problem is that you don't have the canonical in the header of the page so it's normal that you get all the URLs listed.
This means that either you didn't enter a canonical URL in the product, or that you have the file "show" of the view "product" which has been customized from an old version of HikaShop which didn't support canonical URLs.
So you would have to check that view file under the menu Display->Views and remove the customization in it in order to get the new code to handle canonical URLs in that case.

Hi Nicholas,

The main url is www.gouri-gouri.com/gr/home-charms . It has a canonical. The rest of the urls contain a product code inside. Those too have canonicals. And I have removed all my customisations but still no url appears in the source code of these duplicates.

Hi,

Could you provide a ftp access so that we could put some traces in the code on your website in order to understand the problem as we are not able to reproduce the issue on our end ?