Dynamic URL Parameters + Woocommerce create 404 errors
-
Hi Guys,
Our latest Moz crawl shows a lot of 404-errors for pages that create dynamical links for users? (I guess it are dynamic links, not sure).Situation: On a page which shows products from brand X users can use the pagination icons on the bottom, or click on: View: / 24/48/All.
When a user clicks 48 the end of the link will be /?show_products=48
I think there were some pages that could show 48 products but do not exist anymore (because products are sold out for example), and that's why they show 404's and Moz reports them.How do I deal with these 404-errors? I can't set a 301-redirect because it depends on how many products are shown (it changes every time).
Should I just ignore these kind of 404-errors? Or what is the best way to handle this situation? -
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for letting me know I will post a new one to see if someone can help me out!Best,
Joost -
Joost
You might want to open a new question (on how to filter) - this question is too deep down the list & marked as answered so I fear nobody is going to see your additional question.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
I tried to find some more info last night regarding this issue (the practical part, how to implement it).
But haven't found a solution yet. Thanks for your help!! Really appreciate it.If someone knows please let me know!
Joost -
Hi Joost,
Unfortunately we don't use Wordpress in our company - I know the basics of the Yoast plugin but I am not really an expert in how to configure it. Maybe somebody else on Moz can help you on how to configure it. My guess would be to fill in the full url - you could always try & see if this works.
There are quite a lot of users on the forum who use Yoast - so I guess they should be able to help you with the configuration.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Or can I just use the canonical input field from the category (when you hit edit under the category)?
I assume that is not specfic enough and means a canonical for the "whole" category, right? -
Probably the easiest way to deal with this is to chose one of these pages as the main page & use canonicals on the other versions to the main one.
So - suppose you would chose _/?show_products=all _as the main page - than page /?show_products=48 would have /?show_products=all as canonical.
As you also use pagination - the option of the canonical offers the advantage that you can put the /?show_products_all as canonical url on all the pages (check also this page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en)Another option would be to put a nofollow on the other display options. So by default people would arrive on /?show_products=24 - the links on show 48 - all would be of type "nofollow'
You might want to check this article: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html - the scope of the article is a bit larger than the question you as here but some of the points are applicable.
Hope this helps;
Dirk
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
-
Create 100% new content in existing page/URL?
We have about 30 pages of content that we are hiding from the website as these articles had some issues. If these pages ranked well, would you recommend that the new content is written within these pages? Meaning, we would replace the content that's in those pages with the same topic and keywords. Or do you think it's best to start a new page instead?
On-Page Optimization | | kvillalobos0 -
Static pages with dynamic content: Good for SEO?
I wanted to know ones thoughts on reducing duplication by creating a static page with a few dynamic fields. Has anyone done this? If 75% of a page is static and 25% is dynamic, is that a good ratio? It's an idea I am thinking about to combat duplication issues affecting ecommerce pages. Some ecommerce sites generate a new page for a small change like size, but the content is the same. What if you could create a single static page and depending on the size chosen, only those fields connected to the size are dynamic? Everything else remains the same. For caching purposes, you always submit a cached page with default values. Wouldn't this work? Isn't this a solution for duplicate ecommerce pages? It would also help in ranking, rather than multiple external links across duplicate ecommerce pages, it would just be to a single page.
On-Page Optimization | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
URL Domain Used in Meta Description
Today I was asked if using a domain url in your meta description can have a negative impact on your website. This description includes a list of the homepage url, but directs visitors to a different internal page of the website. My concern fell with directing visitors to a different page of the site, but promoting the homepage in the description/snippet. With Penguin 2.1 release on the 4th, I'm very cautious of my links/urls. What are your thoughts behind this? What are the possible, if any negative impacts this could have on a site? This URL does have a brand name as so the Title.
On-Page Optimization | | flcity150 -
Should ".html" in the URL or not?
Does URL like /wedding-dresses.html/f/price/2,100 with "html" in the middle do harm to SEO? Should I drop the ".html"?
On-Page Optimization | | StevenRoland0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
Hello, I am sure that this question has been asked many times, but I am still not sure what to do about the following: Our site's URL structure has changed a few times in the past few months. Recenty, we have changed our URLs to become more SEO friendly. However, Google has indexed the old URLs as well. To give an example: The following page in our website shows the following URLs in Google Webmaster Tools: Confúcio e Seus Ensinamentos /artigo/68_38/2/as_religioes_iv_confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/14_6132/vestibular/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/1_14_6132/vestibular/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/_14_6132/Vestibular/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/ensino/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos/ The correct URL is the last one. What should I do about the other ones? Almost all the pages in our website have this problem. We have redirected the old URLs to the new ones, but is there anything else we should do? We were asking Google to remove them, but Google has informed us that it has reached the limit. Please advise us on waht we should do. We have removed the old sitemap with the old URLs. What else must we do? Thank you very much.
On-Page Optimization | | Tev0 -
Crawl error: duplicate title for home page
I'm seeing a duplicate title for the home page, both the static file name and the domain. like: http://domain.com
On-Page Optimization | | joshcanhelp
http://domain.com/index.cfm I know how to set this in Google Analytics but how would I make sure this isn't seen as an error? It's accounting for both a duplicate title and duplicate content. Thanks!0 -
How long after a URL starts showing a 404 does Google stop crawling?
Before hiring me to do SEO, a client re-launched their site and did not 301 the old URLs to the new. Only the home page URL stayed the same. For a month after the re-launch, the old URLs returned a 404. For the next month, all 404 pages (basically any non-existent URL) were 301'd to the home page. Finally, 2 months after launching, they properly 301'd the old URLs to the new. Now, the new URLs are not ranking well. I assume it's too late to realize any benefit from the 301's, just checking to see if anybody has any insight into how long Google keeps trying to crawl old/404/improperly 301'd URLs. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | AndrewMiller0 -
Duplicate content issue with dynamically generated url
Hi, For those who have followed my previous question, I have a similar one regarding dynamically generated urls. From this page http://www.selectcaribbean.com/listing.html the user can make a selection according to various criteria. 6 results are presented and then the user can go to the next page. I know I should probably rewrite url's such as these: http://www.selectcaribbean.com/listing.html?pageNo=1&selType=&selCity=&selPrice=&selBeds=&selTrad=&selMod=&selOcean= but since all the results presented are basically generated on the fly for the convenience of the user, I am afraid google my consider this as an attempt to generate more pages as there are pages for each individual listing. What is my solution for this? Nofollow these pages? Block them thru robots txt?
On-Page Optimization | | multilang0