What causes Redirect error in google web manger tools ?

[jasonshanks]

i think this discussion is not the source of your problem. operative word being think, so take everything with a grain of salt... or not...

you have come up against an issue that is a stubborn one and one that i really do not have an adequate solution; despite having tried.

google is complaining about a redirect.

you can read this blog post here, or more importantly just read the title which says:

Worse Than a 404 Not Found Error? A Redirect to a 404!

then lets look at the network tab in the dev tools for the link that you have provided:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8c42285ja6...15-18.png?dl=0

(the file manager on this board has me stumped at the moment).

you will see that your initial link issues a 302 and redirects to exactly the same place; and now the http status code is a 404. hmmm.... exactly the title of that blog post.

now, you can comment out this line:

https://github.com/zencart/zencart/b...itize.php#L105

and i'm guessing that going to that link will now issue a 404 without the 302 redirect.

i have gone back and forth on this issue for many moons, and figuring out SEO can be a challenge. but that's what i think your issue is. and why zc has it that way.... you got me... but how you present product 83, if it is a valid product that is no longer in stock and hence its status is off, v. a product that you never had before and does not exist in the database has SEO implications.

but please do not ask me what they are; i am not a SEO expert but any stretch of the imagination.

best.

Hello,

So sorry for the late reply back. Yeah changing to the newer version of sitemap xml did not fix the issue. I have commented out the line as you pointed out in init_santize.php


/**
* zen_redirect(zen_href_link($_GET['main_page'], 'products_id=' . $_GET['products_id']));
*/

Hopefully i did that right above. Retrying the verify. Thanks again guys.

[jasonshanks]

I now get a " Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404" error message for a category thats not even set to visible yet. Google is still showing the other ones as validating. I guess i will know in a few days if commenting out that line worked.

[carlwhat]

I now get a " Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404" error message for a category thats not even set to visible yet. Google is still showing the other ones as validating. I guess i will know in a few days if commenting out that line worked.

again, i am NO SEO expert; but i do not like that. how did google find out about that category? is it in your sitemap? the old sitemap?

keeping it as a soft 404 could be a problem later on.

if google knows about it, and your plan is to make it visible some time soon, i would consider making it visible sooner rather than later.

best.

[jasonshanks]

again, i am NO SEO expert; but i do not like that. how did google find out about that category? is it in your sitemap? the old sitemap?

keeping it as a soft 404 could be a problem later on.

if google knows about it, and your plan is to make it visible some time soon, i would consider making it visible sooner rather than later.

best.

Yeah its not in the sitemap yet. I made it but hadn't put any products in it yet, so i hid it till then. Will make it live today and add it. There was maybe a period of a few hours while i was building the area that it wasn't hidden. Maybe the site crawler grabbed it then ? In any event I will keep you up to date and thank you so much for your help.

[mprough]

I would suggest you use a sitemap generator that actually crawls to avoid errors like this. SitemapXML is easy to use and a small investment. It also logs broken links and such. I have used it for 10+ years, the support is great.
~Melanie

[jasonshanks]

I would suggest you use a sitemap generator that actually crawls to avoid errors like this. SitemapXML is easy to use and a small investment. It also logs broken links and such. I have used it for 10+ years, the support is great.
~Melanie

I am using Sitemap XML 4.0 and before that I used 3.9.6. If worse comes to worse i guess i can just go back to telling google to ignore those links.

[mprough]

I mean this one (https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standal...generator.html) as it crawls your website just like a search engine spider.

~Melanie

[jasonshanks]

I mean this one (https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standal...generator.html) as it crawls your website just like a search engine spider.

~Melanie

oh wow will try that one out next. Thank you for letting me know about it.

[jasonshanks]

Alright , the fix seems to have worked as the failed ones are now slowly passing validation. I enabled the category so will see if that too validates.

[carlwhat]

Alright , the fix seems to have worked as the failed ones are now slowly passing validation. I enabled the category so will see if that too validates.