Duplicate URL's

-- HikaShop version -- : 2.3.6
-- Joomla version -- : 3.3.6
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : none

Hello,

I'm having problems with certain URL's showing up in google search as duplicates. This is confirmed within google webmaster.

Any ideas how I can prevent google indexing URL's like the one below.

/index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=product&task=show&cid=5812&name=vandalhanoverblack&Itemid=107&category_pathway=21

In this instance the canonical URL set is:

/womensshoes/product/vandalhanoverblack

This is also the URL given within the sitemap.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Hal

Hello,
Checking that thread will probably help you : www.hikashop.com/forum/product-category-...plicate-content.html

You need to fill the "canonical URL" field of your products with the main URL of the product. That way, search engines won't flag the different links as duplicated content.

Thanks for your reply.

I don't understand, what is the main URL? I have menu items such that can be used to reach the same product. I have a menu 'Womens Shoes', but I also have a 'Brands' menu.

I have chosen for Hikashop to automatically input canonical tags and they are all showing correctly in the header of the page. For some reason though I am getting these sorts of URL's indexed: /index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=product&task=show&cid=5812&name=vandalhanoverblack&Itemid=107&category_pathway=21

This URL doesn't show this in the header of the page and I don't understand how google crawled this link in the first place?

Kind Regards,
Hal Holmes-Pierce

Hi
the main URL is the URL you want search engine to index .
search engine (robot) analyze URL and ll see that many differents URL go to the same content .
you ca ncreat many link to the same product ! So among the URL joomla generate for you in the FrontEnd ; you ll need to define which you want to be the main url= canonicalurl ( <link rel="canonicalurl" href=""> in the FrontEnd )
see in HKS demo page
I copy the documentation for URL and caninocal URL from the documentation install with hikashop .
Url : The url of the product is a url to the manufacturer website in order to get more information for your customers. This url, if filled in, will be displayed on the product page.
Canonical URL : You can enter here the main URL of the product which will be declared as the "canonical" URL of the page to Google and other search engines. That will help you avoid duplicate URL issues with several links going to the same product page due to the nature of Joomla. You can enter either the full URL or only the URL starting from the first slash after the website's main URL.

Google don't like url with id=value so best url "format" :
SEF SEO OK static www.somesites.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm
CMS BAD dynamic www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date
CMS can manage many format in diferent location ( core extension component BE )

Even if product is create ; the url of product don't exist if you don't create a web page that show the product and for acces to this page you ll need a link somewhere . Think of a menu that contain many links that goes to the same products . So many url ( hide behind a link name) can be differents but go to the same product content can have differents URL .All search engine after parse all url links compute the information to group the url by content page . Inside this group of url , it must find in one of them one ( only ) canonical url define in html by code <a rel="canonical" href="url1">link name </a> . The others links in the same group don't have rel="canonical" . url1 is the canonical url .

see
demo.hikashop.com/administrator/index.ph...ctrl=config#features
demo.hikashop.com/administrator/index.ph...roduct&task=edit&cid []=10
www.hikashop.com/forum/4-how-to/53780-av...que-product-url.html

Joomla has many problems for manage URL for a point of view of php developpers .... it could be better but lle be resolve in next joomla version (so SEF tool could be usefull now depend of quality of components implementation ) . I think absolute url ll be better than relative url ! .

I think write nothing wrong !!

Thanks for your reply.

I have always left the top URL box blank. The canonical URL's are set to add automatically, so every product I add has a canonical URL. This is also confirmed in the HTTP header and they are all working correctly.

My problem is that Google seems to be crawling links and I don't know where they are from. So, where could it be finding the following link?

/index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=product&task=show&cid=5812&name=vandalhanoverblack&Itemid=107&category_pathway=21

Interestingly, this only happens with one category (van dal).

Another point here is that I have canonical tags on all of my product listings, why would google ignore these? In fact, it's a bigger problem than that. At this moment during a live search it's prioritising the link that I shared above instead of the following canonical URL: /womensshoes/product/vandalhanoverblack

In summary I have two problems.

1) Google are ignoring my canonical link
2) Where are they finding these /index.php?option=com_hikashop... URL's.

Kind Regards,
Hal

Hi
I think it take time to google to manage the canonical url (bot).
regards

You're exactly right, I think it takes a few 'crawls' before they believe the canonical url to be correct.

This is why I think it's so important that these /index.php?option=com_hikashop... url's aren't crawled in the first place.