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cijeho
Starting Member

13 Posts

Posted - September 04 2008 :  11:51:35  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Pardon me if this is a "duh" question. I'm using 4.50. I have recently realized that my second and third pages of my products in my shopping cart are not searchable. Things on those pages don't show up either on my google search of my site or on search engines period. Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Thank you!!

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - September 04 2008 :  18:07:49  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
seo experts will have a better understanding of the precise mechanics than I do on this, but my guess is that it's down to the search engines not paging-through the links like a normal visitor would and because it relies on sessions for the paging links rather than re-iterating the original query when paging.

When it comes to paging, vpasp uses the latest-query when paging, so really it's only page1 of a given link that'll ever be truly known by a search engine, as page 2/3/4 etc are all dependant on what the search engine happened to have looked at immediately prior to trawling that page. I guess some search engines in some instances might pick up the other pages, but it's a very gray/uncertain area.

Have a look at the info/demo mentioned on our "enhanced paging" addon blurb as it explains some of those aspects in more detail:
http://www.bigyellowkey.com/mysoftware_product_details.asp?prdid=317&opu=n

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
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cijeho
Starting Member

13 Posts

Posted - September 04 2008 :  18:30:36  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by devshb

When it comes to paging, vpasp uses the latest-query when paging, so really it's only page1 of a given link that'll ever be truly known by a search engine, as page 2/3/4 etc are all dependant on what the search engine happened to have looked at immediately prior to trawling that page. I guess some search engines in some instances might pick up the other pages, but it's a very gray/uncertain area.



I'm uncertain of what you mean by "latest-query". Aren't my pages static? x number of items per page?
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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - September 05 2008 :  03:29:07  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
by "latest query" I mean whatever search you last did (eg clicking on a category link, or doing a search from a search mini-form etc) is what the pages will relate to; if you lose the context of that original search then the page links have no meaning and will just produce an error. or will produce results from the wrong search.

eg the link:
shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=2

just says "show page 2 of what I last did a search on" but it doesn't say what that search was (it just uses whatever's in the current session to find the original search)

So if you do a search, then click on a link and open-in-new-window/tab, and then do a separate/new search on your new tab/window, then go back to your original window and try to page, you'll see the 2 tabs/windows conflict. It's that conflict and the reliance on sessions across multiple pages which I think the search engines have problems with.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
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Steve2507
VP-CART Expert

590 Posts

Posted - September 05 2008 :  03:30:04  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
SEO is my field more so than design, so here goes with an answer for you.

The problem with VP is it uses sessions rather than fixed reference pages.

If you have 100 products either in a search or in a category and you have 10 to a page, the first page will be displayed as shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=1 (or whatever id number), the second page is shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=2 and the third is shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=3 etc up to shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=10.

If you now have 100 products in a different category the the first page will be displayed as shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2 (or whatever id number), the second page is shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=2 and the third is shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=3 etc up to shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=10.

The problem for search engines is shopdisplayproducts.asp?page= you could have dozens of these (our site would have approximately 600). So imagine you are the search engine. You see shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=2 with some content then you see exactly the same page name (and location) but with completely different content. Which is the one to use? Answer is the search engine ignores both.

We have installed the BYZ paging add-on on one of our sites to see if this helps. Initial tests seem to confirm that it is helping, although the ability to have better page names would be a distinct futher advantage.

Does this make sense?


Steve
Sex toys from a UK sex shop
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cijeho
Starting Member

13 Posts

Posted - September 05 2008 :  10:24:53  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Steve2507

SEO is my field more so than design, so here goes with an ans


We have installed the BYZ paging add-on on one of our sites to see if this helps. Initial tests seem to confirm that it is helping, although the ability to have better page names would be a distinct futher advantage.

Does this make sense?


Steve
Sex toys from a UK sex shop


Yes, you did a great job explaining. Now I will investigate what the BYZ paging add-on is.
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Steve2507
VP-CART Expert

590 Posts

Posted - September 06 2008 :  04:19:08  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Following on from my previous posts I have found a problem with regards to SEO and the BYZ paging add on.

We use pother3 (poth3 in the url) to order our products, so if you have 100 products in a category with 10 to a page then the file names are:
  • shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=5648&sortorder=poth3&page=1&pagesize=10
  • shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=5648&sortorder=poth3&page=2&pagesize=10

  • shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=5648&sortorder=poth3&page=3&pagesize=10
  • etc.
The problem arises from how the meta tags are generated.

The system pulls the meta tag info from the category, so in the above example the title tags and the description tags would all be identical. Google flags this up as a problem (in webmaster tools). The bigger problem is that we don;t know for sure how Google or any search engine would treat these ages. It could be that the first page the search engine finds is given full ranking, but any other page with the same title and/or description is devalued.

The way we have got round it is to pull in the page number and page size variables and use them in the descriptin an title tags via shopheaders.asp.

So for titles we have -
  • title title title. Page 1 with 10 per page
  • title title title. Page 2 with 10 per page
  • title title title. Page 3 with 10 per page
The meta description is set up in a similar.

I'm hoping this will fix the problem, I also have another trick up my sleeve which I will try if this fails.


Steve
Sex toys from a UK sex shop

Edited by - Steve2507 on September 06 2008 04:20:01
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