Canonical Tags + No Index

[Dan1234]

So what exactly is the concern?
Is that you don't like the view=column thing being added to the end? That's added by the column/grid mod you've got installed.

Or is it that you think the manufacturers page is problematic somehow? If so, how did you come to that conclusion?

Yeah, sorry, the view=column is an addon, but it isn't a SEO mod as such. It's the Column Layout Grid for Product Listing add on.

I have used lat9's way of getting the no index tags into all the manufacturer pages now, but now i'm stuck with getting the section pages with view=columns /rows a no index tag.

Also Im struggling on how to get a no index on pages that end in ?language=en also?

[DrByte]

You don't need a noindex tag! Doing that for every possible combination will have you chasing your tail.

The much better approach is to simply let the <link canonical> tag show the master (ie: canonical) page to be indexed.

Edit /includes/init_includes/init_canonical.php and find this line:

$excludeParams[] = 'language';

Then add this below it:

$excludeParams[] = 'view';

That will tell it to exclude the view parameter, in addition to all the other ones it's already excluding, like language.

[Dan1234]

You don't need a noindex tag! Doing that for every possible combination will have you chasing your tail.

The much better approach is to simply let the <link canonical> tag show the master (ie: canonical) page to be indexed.

Edit /includes/init_includes/init_canonical.php and find this line:

$excludeParams[] = 'language';

Then add this below it:

$excludeParams[] = 'view';

That will tell it to exclude the view parameter, in addition to all the other ones it's already excluding, like language.

Tried putting this in,

still getting the same problem, it doesn't seem to exclude the view bit out of the url

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.s e xdollsuk.co.uk/realistic-######-dolls-c-7_1.html?view=columns" />

[DrByte]

Could be your SEO-URL-Rewriter then.

[lhungil]

Tried putting this in, still getting the same problem...

Is the file "/includes/init_includes/overrides/init_canonical.php" present?
If so make sure the changes are also applied to "/includes/init_includes/overrides/init_canonical.php".

[Dan1234]

Could be your SEO-URL-Rewriter then.

Ok mate fair enough,

I have took the site offline and submitted a request to google to de-index the full website, I'm going to remove the column/grid add on so that it doesn't create extra pages.

Is there any way of stopping the language?en type pages being generated at all? ( I know the canonical tag works for these but I would rather them just not be there)

And also the Alpha sort, how could I stop those being generated, with my website being so small, I really don't think it's needed.

Much appreciated if you can help

[DrByte]

Is there any way of stopping the language?en type pages being generated at all? ( I know the canonical tag works for these but I would rather them just not be there)

If your site has only english, then turn off the language-selector sidebox; that way no language will ever be selected.
But really, Zen Cart normally doesn't add language=en to every page. Instead, it accepts it once and then redraws the page without it after remembering the selection. So again I blame your plugins for the abnormal behaviour.

And also the Alpha sort, how could I stop those being generated, with my website being so small, I really don't think it's needed.

You could turn off the alpha-sort feature altogether in your admin settings, and then wouldn't have to deal with its parameters hitting your URLs.

Remember, if humans aren't using those features, then it's bots that are using them and creating those undesired links in your Google Webmaster Tools (or at least, I assume it's Webmaster Tools that are making you pursue all of this stuff that humans aren't using on your site).