E-Commerce: Random Cart ID Redirects
-
Hi All,
I'm having an ecommerce cart issue. Basically, each time a purchase is made, the cart pops up with a unique id (eg www.mysite.com/cart.php?action=add&product_id=3728), This is being caught by MOZ scans as an individual page in some instances.
Could I simply add Disallow: /cart.php to my robots.txt to nix this issue? In theory it should keep all subsequent query strings from being indexed, right?
Thanks!
-
I'm using Interspire's shopping cart system with a few modifications. There's absolutely no official support for it at this point, so I appreciate your help.
The cart is a standalone php page, so I think that just blocking that off should be sufficient.
Thanks!
-
No problem. What platform do you use, because you can include what CleverPhD said as well, it really just depends on how the headers of the template are generated. I am not familiar with a platform that uses directories for the cart pages, but I am sure that some exist. One thing to watch out for if you try to no follow a whole directory is, some carts put all of their secured (ssl) pages in the same place. This could include the contact page, which you want to leave index able. If you are not familiar with coding in the platform, I would avoid it, because if you got the conditional code wrong, you could de-index a portion of your site accidentally.
-
Thanks, Lesley. I've just added the cart page to the disallow list.
-
I would add, you want to also no follow, noindex all links to any of your shopping cart pages. Ideally, if you have your cart pages in a given folder, you can disallow the whole folder and take care of things as a group.
-
Generally you always disallow the cart page in e-commerce sites. The reason being is that some spiders like baidu, will make fake shopping carts when spidering your site. If you keep track of your abandoned cart rate, this will wreak havoc on your stats.
When you disallow the cart.php, it will keep the whole page from being indexed, which ideally is not a bad thing. More than likely the way your cart works is it uses ajax to post the product to that page silently to add it to the cart. But at the same time if you go to site.com/cart.php it will more than likely take you to the cart screen. There really is no inherit value in having that page indexed by search engines. If people are coming to that page, it will also skew your numbers when you are trying to figure why people are dropping out of the checkout process.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Removing Redirected URLs from XML Sitemap
If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.
Technical SEO | | RyanOD0 -
Content Organization Advice with Big Commerce
Hi folks, We have three places with unique content for our company. Our ecommerce site (hosted on big commerce), our help desk knowledge base (subdomain, hosted on zendesk), and our blog (separate domain, self hosted wordpress). We're about to refocus our efforts on generating high quality content, and I'm trying to figure out the best strategy to organize it. I think from an SEO perspective, if we had all of the content hosted directly on our ecommerce site, that would be best. Unfortunately Big Commerce doesn't have much by way of content management. We can't (yet) install a blogging platform or CMS onto our root domain. What's the next best option? Does it do any good to move our blog to a subdomain? Should I try to post all content on our root domain and just deal with the lack of content management (i.e. just make a new web page for each blog entry). Basically, what's the best strategy in this situation for SEO? Any advice appreciated. Thanks so much! Hal
Technical SEO | | AlabuSkinCare0 -
HTACCESS redirect vs. forwarding
I'm having trouble using htaccess redirect to redirect a subdomain to a new domain on a different server. Tech support at godaddy suggested I forward the subdomain. The subdomain has already been cached by google. Will forwarding in this way have the same affect (SEO wise) as an htaccess redirect??
Technical SEO | | triple90 -
CNAME redirect for Press Releases
Our company is moving our press release section over to Business Wire. Business Wire will be hosting the press releases on their servers http//ourcompany.newshq.businesswire.com, but we want it to display as if these are hosted on our site www.ourcompany/press-releases/. This is where our press releases are hosted now. They are recommending using a CNAME redirect to essentially mask their URL and display ours. We don't want to lose out on the search value that our press release area has built up over time. Will the CNAME redirect cause any SEO problems?
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0 -
SEO value of WP e-Commerce Plugin
I'm doing a Wordpress project that will feature about 100 products and am thinking of using WP e-Commerce but am concerned about SEO. Does anyone have any comments on SEO strength/weakness of WP-eCommerce plugin for Wordpress?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
301 redirect dropped page rank
Hi, We have a www domain that I have changed to a non www domain. The www domain had been in place for some time and had a good page rank, PR4. After this change the page rank dropped significantly (PR0, and now recently back to PR2) despite it being a 301 redirect which I thought "should" carry over the page rank. Yes, I am aware I should have just left it be. Hind sight 20/20 .. ya ya ya 🙂 My questions Is the 301 the correct method for this? Why did the page rank drop despite the 301? Should we go back to the www domain at this point? Thanks Kris
Technical SEO | | adriot0 -
Joomla 301 redirects
hi i am using joomla sef404 and i have 7000 not found pages in my webmaster google tool page. the trouble is i got rid of a lot of pages and also components so now i am left with loads of not found pages. what i want to try and do is to create 301 redirects so that i do not lose page rank. can anyone please let me know how to do this step by step please
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
IIS Work Around 301 Redirects
We are redirecting page-level content (about 500 pages) from several sub domains to our main site. With IIS, It’s my understanding that file locations must match. For example: subdomain/pathA/filename1
Technical SEO | | DigitalMkt
mainsite/pathA/filename1 Since the sub domain files are not on the main site, this means we'd create up to 500 zero byte dummy files on the new server and replicate the sub domain directory structure. With IIS is there a work around for handling page level redirects without duplicating the file location? In the case of white papers, videos and case studies, we'll imlement directory level redirection. Thanks in advance.0