Request to Prevent Indexing and Generation of Certain Technical URLs in HikaShop

-- HikaShop version -- : 5.1.6
-- Joomla version -- : 5.3.1
-- PHP version -- : 8.3.1

Hi HikaShop Team,

We are currently using HikaShop on our Joomla site and have encountered an issue with several types of URLs being generated and indexed by search engines, which causes SEO problems due to duplicate or non-relevant pages appearing in search results.

The problematic URL patterns include:

/product/download/
/product/contact/
/product/listing/
/product/waitlist/
/product/updatecart/

These URLs often appear under different category paths, resulting in duplicate content and cluttering the Google index with pages that do not provide meaningful value to users.

Additionally, it appears that categories and products can be accessed through multiple URL variants, for example:

/some-category/category/other-category
/some-category/category/manufacturer1
/some-category/product/some-product

In other words, it seems possible to view a category or product through any category alias, including categories designated as manufacturers. This causes URL duplication and makes it difficult to control which URLs should be indexed.

Could you please advise on the following:

Is there an official recommended way to prevent these URLs from being generated or crawled by search engines?

Are there settings or best practices in HikaShop to exclude these URLs from indexing (e.g., via robots.txt, meta tags, canonical URLs, or redirects)?

Any advice on how to handle these URL patterns to improve SEO and avoid duplicate content issues?
Thank you very much for your assistance!

Best regards,

Hello,

Thank you for your guidance regarding the use of canonical URLs.

We’ve tested the "Force canonical URLs on listings" setting, and while it helps prevent duplicate content, there’s a significant usability issue:

When this setting is enabled, the user’s breadcrumb trail is forcibly changed to match the canonical route, regardless of how the user navigated to the product.

For example:

A customer is browsing products within a specific category.

They click on a product from that category page.

If "Force canonical URLs" is disabled, the breadcrumbs show the correct path, and the user can easily navigate back to any point.

But if it's enabled, the breadcrumb path is replaced with the canonical route — not the one the user followed.

This leads to confusion:

The user cannot retrace their steps via breadcrumbs

They have to rely on the browser’s Back button instead

It breaks the intuitive flow of browsing products in a specific context

Would it be possible to preserve the original navigation path in breadcrumbs, even when canonical URLs are enforced?
Or perhaps offer a mode that sets canonical URLs for SEO without rewriting the actual route used in navigation?

Thanks in advance for considering this improvement.

best regards

Hello HikaShop team,

We’re working on cleaning up our URL structure to avoid duplicate or unnecessary pages being indexed by search engines.

To achieve this, we’ve decided to **unpublish some categories** and instead link to them via Joomla menu items, in order to have cleaner and more controlled URLs.

However, we’ve encountered an issue with **manufacturer entries**, which are also stored as categories in the system.

If we **unpublish the manufacturer categories**, they **no longer appear in the product filters** (for example, as brand filters on product listings).
But if we **publish them back**, then URLs such as:

```
/menu/category/manufacturer
```

start appearing and getting indexed again, which we would like to avoid.

**Is there any way to keep the manufacturer categories unpublished (or hidden from direct links), but still have them available as filtering options in the frontend?**
Or is there a recommended way to handle this situation?

We’re trying to balance SEO cleanliness with user functionality.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best regards,