Eliminating dual content due to missing cPath variable

[DrByte]

Is it possible that all your problems stem from what might be a bug in your Google Sitemaps addon, and maybe this whole dual-content thing is caused by that, and not by Zen Cart at all?

[Website Rob]

I now submitted another sitemap generated with www.xml-sitemaps.com
utility, Google accepted it but hasn't indexed it yet so I don't know what their "comments" would be on this.
Here is the link to it:
http://www.all4coffee.com/sitemap.xml

Does this one look better in your opinion?

A World of difference, with regard to the URLs used in the second one. That one is using actual and correct URLs which should vastly improve your standings with "all" Search Engines.

[FluffyTheCat]

Is it possible that all your problems stem from what might be a bug in your Google Sitemaps addon, and maybe this whole dual-content thing is caused by that, and not by Zen Cart at all?

I think we have a winner!


The Google Sitemap Addon creates sitemapcategories.xml so all the products on the category pages gets crawled (with cpath).

Then sitemapproducts.xml (created by the addon) lists all the products without cpath.

Hmmm... why is there "duplicate" content.
I use the same addon and have the same problem but I dont worry too much because Google is smart and know its not intentional and I am not trying to be deceptive. But maybe this can be patched in the mod?

[all4coffee]

Is it possible that all your problems stem from what might be a bug in your Google Sitemaps addon, and maybe this whole dual-content thing is caused by that, and not by Zen Cart at all?

Yes, I think this might be it. I should know within few days - I hope. I created another yet sitemap (details in the next post in response to Website Rob). If this works the Google Sitemap addon could go good-bye... especially so many people are having such a hard time installing it correctly... I will report back

[all4coffee]

A World of difference, with regard to the URLs used in the second one. That one is using actual and correct URLs which should vastly improve your standings with "all" Search Engines.

The only thing I dicovered later that this free service does only up to 500 pages so the sitemap might look good but it is incomplete. I searched and found Inspyder Sitemap Creator, a free standing piece of software which allows not only to create but also to edit sitemaps (priority, frequency). Nice, simple interface, exclusions and rules list, ftp, auto scheduling, ping major engines and most importantly duplicate content detection.
It does cost 39.95 but if it works its worth every penny. It found over 2200 urls on my site and sitemapped around 1800 (half of which I excluded)

I just uploaded it to Google.
http://www.all4coffee.com/sitemap.xml

Being able to create rules for specific type of URLs I found especially useful since Google started complaining (when I changed priority for my products on Google Sitemap addon to 0.8 from default 0.5) that all urls "have the same and not default priority...

While I'm waiting for Googles reaction to my new sitemap I do have a question. Would I need any more the code change proposed at the start of this thread to fight the duplicate content? Or this code is an improvement of how things work/supposed to work anyway. I'm asking because if it serves no purpose I would rather "go back to the ZenCart original...

I will report back with results of the new sitemap submission.