Re: Disabled categories still found by Googlebot (and showing up in searches)
Hi mc123456789,
Thank you for the reply. Good to know there are several things to consider here. First line of enquiry is to check what Zen Cart's responsibility and expected behaviour is, and thereafter to work on the external parts like Webmaster Tools.
So, for firstly for Zen Cart:
I gather from your reply that the fact that disabled pages are accessible, i.e., they are dynamically created if accessed at their URL, is expected behaviour. That is quite surprising to me, as I would have expected (without knowing anything else about the logic involved) that these pages simply cease to exist, and users would be presented with the define_page_not_found (which I spent quite a bit of effort on). If that is indeed expected behaviour, I need to keep that in mind, and also explain how this works to my partner who is handling the administration of products but is only just getting into understanding SEO issues (about 1 foot behind me, heh).
Next, I see that I do not have a custom meta_tags.php file, so I am using the default one from english/meta_tags.php (I can post it if needed, but it is untouched by me from the original in 1.5.6c). I really had no idea I might need to touch this file, so that is news and something more to learn. Forgive me for saying this as obviously Zen Cart is open-source and all that, but it seems to me I have stumbled into something that is either incomplete or tricky to handle safely. The good thing of course is that this thread may help other people with similar problems.
I'm not sure what I need to think about regarding the meta_tags.php file, most of the defines are empty strings. I'll search for some related threads on meta_tags.php before I edit the (new override) file.
Next, the sitemap. Yes, I am using the SitemapXML v3.9.6 plugin, and looking at the files it generated they are from July 2019, although I opened the store officially on December 1st, 2019! So the sitemap is totally out of whack with the actual store. I did not realize that this is not updated at each edit or on a regular basis. I should note though that I have not uploaded this sitemap to Google Search Console (sorry, this is what Webmaster Tools is now known as).
I will try to figure out in the admin part of the shop how to update the sitemap, and how not to forget to do this when necessary. Oops!
I should also check whether an updated sitemap includes these problematic pages or not.
Lastly, for Google Search Console:
I will see if I can apply to have problematic links removed, and additionally upload the updated sitemap.
Not sure what else I can do on Google, but after any changes on the site I can ask Google to rescan pages that gave problems.
Hope the above is a reasonable approach to go forward. Main blocker at the moment is not knowing what the meta_tags.php file changes should be.
Last edited by gernot; 9 Dec 2019 at 01:23 PM.
Zen Cart 1.5.6c modified to support Japanese language (postage module support work in progress). Upgraded incrementally each version from initial 1.5.5d.
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