Joe Veler
“I just try to concentrate on concentrating.”
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Canonical Product URLs in Magento eCommerce Platform
Posted on November 17th, 2009 No commentsQuestion:
Hey Joe -
In Magento, there is a short form of the product URLs that can be used and I just realized that many of the URLs in the site map that Magento generated uses these short URLs.
For example:
http://www.mydomain.com/category/subcategory/product.html (URL via catalog browsing)
can be shortened to
http://www.mydomain.com/product.html (URL used in site map and used for external linking)This is bad isn’t it? Shouldn’t there only be one? Do we need to rewrite all the shorts to long either in the site map, URL redirects, or both? It is nice having the option of the short URLs for promo’s, etc. But I understand this creates duplicate content which is a bad thing.
Looking forward to your thoughts. It’s also nice having Magento export a sitemap for us, but if it’s hurting us it’s not.
Answer by Joe:
The issue you are describing IS bad. The longer urls are category path urls. And if you had a product in 2 categories, then you would have 2 duplicate urls just because of the path structure. Add in the product detail default view (no category) which is used in the site map and you get a 3rd duplicate URL. So, the number of duplicate urls for a product in Magento is 1 + c where c is the # of categories that the product appears in at a minimum.
Google introduced a new feature earlier this year that eliminates this issue through the use of canonical product URLs. There is a good writeup about this on the Google Webmaster Blog, so I’ll let it explain the “fix” in more detail: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
Now, how do you fix canonical product URLs in Magento? You can write custom code in your template, or you can use a quick solution which is installing a module by Yoast. FYI, Yoast is a great SEO expert that I follow. He has optimized the Wordpress, Magento and Drupal CMSs. I’m not particularly fond of Drupal, but I do use both Wordpress and Magento. Note, I would use Joomla over Drupal. As for the module for Magento, it can be found here: http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/906/canonical-url-s-for-magento
Keep in mind that the module IS going to set the canonical url up to be the product detail default which is the short url. This is perfect as (1) you want to use this url in link-building campaigns, (2) you want to use this link in emails for simplicity, and (3) this is the url that the sitemap feature in Magento uses.
As for the fact that duplicate content problems exist in most all websites… that’s a whole other issue. Here is some further information you might not have read about on duplicate content from the the Google Webmaster Central blog:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.htmlThis should definitely solve your problem. If you need help installing the module, just let me know and I’ll handle it for you.
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Enable and Disable Stylesheets as an SEO Tool
Posted on March 28th, 2009 2 commentsAs a web developer, I sometimes have to look for tricks to find out how my web sites will look in various web browsers, or even to the search engines. Most people use newer browsers, but there are some lingerers that don’t. I don’t always support them, but I sometimes need to know how bad things will look. Read the rest of this entry »
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Winter Funtime at the Office
Posted on March 10th, 2009 No comments
Last week we got about 8 inches of snow in Boone and about 10 inches of snow at the house (just outside of Boone). It snowed last Sunday and Monday, then got bitterly cold. The system came in from the southeast and met up with a cold front coming in from the northwest. If you live in North Carolina and the mid-atlantic region… you know this pattern are the real snow-dumpers. Read the rest of this entry »
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“Air Freshener” Ad Directed by the Coen Brothers
Posted on February 27th, 2009 No commentsHey! In our search for alternative energy searches we hear about several possibilities. The coal industry has enough money behind it, that it can send out a lot of “dis-information” campaigns about the possibilities of “clean” coal. Read the rest of this entry »
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How Our Proposed Stimulus Payment Will Work
Posted on February 12th, 2009 No commentsA friend emailed this to me. It’s a little cynical, but that’s what makes it funny! I think it’s a great explanation of how our stimulus payment will work… Read the rest of this entry »
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My Auto Stimulus Plan
Posted on February 8th, 2009 No commentsIn mid-December I had an idea to stimulate the economy in regards to the auto bailout plan. I ran this by a few of my good friends and then didn’t do anything with it. One of the friend’s I shared this idea with sent me a link on January 17th, 2009 to a site where you could give ideas to president-elect (at the time) Barack Obama. Read the rest of this entry »
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Climate Crisis - Please take 10 seconds to Read This
Posted on October 10th, 2008 No commentsABC refused to air the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America ad about how oil and coal companies have blocked the country’s switch to truly clean energy. Tell ABC to reconsider their decision and air the Repower America ad. Read the rest of this entry »
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401-Keg Plan
Posted on September 26th, 2008 No commentsRetirement plans have been run amuck a bit lately with all the economic crises going on…. here’s an interesting take: Read the rest of this entry »
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Reflecting on “The Original Computer”
Posted on July 20th, 2008 No commentsA friend of mine sent me an email today and it got me to thinking at how slow we would be as a society if we didn’t have “computers”. They exist in our cars, stereos, tvs, college dorms, offices, houses, red lights… just about anything we own and use has some kind of computer chip to operate as it’s central processing unit. Read the rest of this entry »
