Google Indexing Products in sub categories that don't exist...Why..How??

[kcb410]

Hello Everyone,

After using a couple of Zen Cart plugins for importing products and attributes I've started getting Google indexing errors. The strange thing about these errors is that they point to products that are showing in categories/sub categories they shouldn't be in.

For instance this Google link to product_id=548:
http://www.kcbgraphics.com/index.php...roducts_id=548

Product_id=548 should only be found in this category:
http://www.kcbgraphics.com/index.php...roducts_id=548

Does anyone know what might cause this? I'm really hoping those importing plugins didn't corrupt my database!

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

[buggie10]

Have you updated the site map XML under tools see if that helps it work for me.

[kobra]

Do you have these items linked to appear in other categories?

[lhungil]

Out of curiosity are the errors in the "HTML Improvement Suggestions" or somewhere else? And what exactly are the errors? (The rest of this post is a guess you are seeing "duplicate" page messages).

If you change the category a product resides in after a search engine has indexed the site (or the search engine finds an old link on another website, your sitemap, etc) - this can happen.

I am not seeing a <link rel="canonical" .. /> in the head section of your page. I believe 1.3.9h adds this by default unless it is disabled by the theme. Having this tag should solve the issue.

If you are against using a canonical tag, you can manually create 301's from the incorrect location to the correct location. A bit more work, but also would solve the issue.

[kcb410]

Do you have these items linked to appear in other categories?

Hi Kobra,

Sorry for the delayed response... These aren't linked products. In mid July we deleted approximately 350 products that were no longer available from our manufacturer. In webmaster tools we're currently showing 23,643 'Not Found' errors with a 404 response code. That number has steadily increased since July with no reduction in quantity.

I wouldn't think anything of it if there was 350-400 'Not Found' but.....23,643. There's only 1300 products on the site.

Any thought are appreciated. Thanks.

[kcb410]

Out of curiosity are the errors in the "HTML Improvement Suggestions" or somewhere else? And what exactly are the errors? (The rest of this post is a guess you are seeing "duplicate" page messages).

If you change the category a product resides in after a search engine has indexed the site (or the search engine finds an old link on another website, your sitemap, etc) - this can happen.

I am not seeing a <link rel="canonical" .. /> in the head section of your page. I believe 1.3.9h adds this by default unless it is disabled by the theme. Having this tag should solve the issue.

If you are against using a canonical tag, you can manually create 301's from the incorrect location to the correct location. A bit more work, but also would solve the issue.

Hi lhungil,

These errors are in webmaster tools under Health --> Crawl Errors and we're currently showing 23,643 'Not Found' errors with a 404 response code. That number has steadily increased since July with no reduction in quantity. As I mentioned to Kobra we deleted 350 products and moved a few others in July so I wouldn't think anything of it if there was 350-400 'Not Found' but.....23,643. There's only 1300 products on the site.

I'll look into the canonical issue.

Any other thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.

[kcb410]

I am not seeing a <link rel="canonical" .. /> in the head section of your page. I believe 1.3.9h adds this by default unless it is disabled by the theme. Having this tag should solve the issue.

If you are against using a canonical tag, you can manually create 301's from the incorrect location to the correct location. A bit more work, but also would solve the issue.

Hi lhungil,

Regarding the canonical issue.....I had it addressed in my htaccess file with the following:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^kcbgraphics.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.kcbgraphics\.com" [R=301,L]

I think the above was working fine but I have now added it to my html_header file instead. I'm assuming I'm safe to remove it from my htaccess file at this point??

Thanks.

[RodG]

I think the above was working fine but I have now added it to my html_header file instead. I'm assuming I'm safe to remove it from my htaccess file at this point??

Yes, and FWIW you probably don't need it in the html_header file either.

If you set your configure files correctly no other rewrites are necessary.

Cheers
Rod