Google indexing problem

[Shiftypow]

Hi recently I had our zen cart upgraded to v1.5.4 and the SEO URL was changed from what we originally used as the developer suggested it and this seems to have caused major problems for us. When the SEO URL was changed it made our URLS long again e.g

it went from : a s h c y c l e s.com/site/product-name

to : a s h c y c l e s.com/site/bikes/touring-bikes/mens/product-name ( this is an example and it showed all the categoreis he product was lsited under)

the developer shortened it again which in turn caused aggro with all our URL's being found on google. All our items that were on the front pages of google disappeared overnight. Now with google when I search for a specific item e.g. "Dawes Galaxy AL 2015" google does not list the product page it chooses the categorie it is under :

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=dawes+galaxy+al+2015

http://www.a s h c y c l e s.com/site/tourer/dawes-touring-range-2015

not the product and it is doing this more and more for the products. Alternatively the other error it does is :

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=raleigh+...2014+ashcycles

when you click the link it just takes you to the homepage as the URL is wrong :/

Can someone please suggest someone who can help me with this as I have tried resolving it with the developer and he seems to not know what is goingon. Thank you so much for any help.

[kobra]

Do you know what url rewriter you were previously using?
Do you know what url rewriter you are currently using?

How long has this been since your site was upgraded?

If google has dropped your ranking for pages - then that is lost

[Shiftypow]

Do you know what url rewriter you were previously using?
Do you know what url rewriter you are currently using?

How long has this been since your site was upgraded?

If google has dropped your ranking for pages - then that is lost

THe original URL write was made by webelity and the latest URL maker is "simple SEO URL."

The site was upgraded about 2-3 weeks ago.

[lloyd_borrett]

Ouch! None of that looks good.

I'm still using the default Zen Cart URLs. My pages rank pretty well and there are almost 10 years of links to them out there. So I'm not planning to ever mess with 'SEO URLs' which could put it all at risk for no real gain.

I suspect you're just going to have to wait quite a while for your ranking juice to gradually come back.

It might speed things up if you could get your store producing the URLs you had before the upgrade Then any external links out there would be going to the right place. It's possible that right now they don't and this will continue to impact your ability to get back to where you were. Or alternatively, make sure those old URLs out there do go to the right place. (This should have been part of the transition plan.)

And maybe considering sacking the developer who did this stuff without taking into consideration the full impacts.

There are ways to make URL transitions like this, but they tend to be complicated and thus are rarely handled properly resulting in these sorts of impacts.

Best regards, Lloyd Borrett.

[mc12345678]

Ii would say such a transition actually can be really easy, though would have discouraged Simple SEO and instead use either CEON URI or Ultimate SEO... CEON can be setup to indvidually assign URIs to products (thus restoring the short uri while being able to handle any assigned/stored URI that has previouusly existed.) I believe USU has the ability to offer some customization, but I am not quite as familiar with it's overall functionality to provide clear/specific guidance on that, but I suspect that someone close to the software will be along shortly. :)

I would agree with lloyd on dumping the developer. Uri rewriters have to be handled properly in a transition, totally wasn't in this upgrade... A complete shame too...

[kobra]

simple SEO URL does not work woth the latest ZenCart to my knowledge
What version of ZenCart did you have your site upgraded to?

[Shiftypow]

simple SEO URL does not work woth the latest ZenCart to my knowledge
What version of ZenCart did you have your site upgraded to?

it has been upgradesd to 1.5.4 :/

[mc12345678]

it has been upgradesd to 1.5.4 :/

The last time I saw an "upgraded" version "operating" on a site, it was generating 100's of log files because of errors. The site owner was completely unaware of that happening until I had installed lat9's display logs allowing viewing/reporting of logs in the admin... Needless to say, I was "blamed" for creatng all the logs which had originally been accumulating unbeknownst to the store owner... Yes, people were being redirected, but at a significant cost and unknown potential for other things to go wrong...

[Shiftypow]

The last time I saw an "upgraded" version "operating" on a site, it was generating 100's of log files because of errors. The site owner was completely unaware of that happening until I had installed lat9's display logs allowing viewing/reporting of logs in the admin... Needless to say, I was "blamed" for creatng all the logs which had originally been accumulating unbeknownst to the store owner... Yes, people were being redirected, but at a significant cost and unknown potential for other things to go wrong...

Can anyone suggest a developer to help, if you can pm me with contact details so I can get a quote thankyou!

[windycityparrot]

have you tried a site map?