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REALLY Worried about Search Engine Compatibility...

magicant

By magicant
in General Support

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magicant

magicant

Posted
Posted

Hi All,

 

As yet I am very worried about how compatible os-commerce is with search engines in general. I have not yet found one os-commerce page eg. www.oscommercesite/catalog that is registered in the search engines.

 

Also I have put up my online site "www.gadgetworldonline.com" if you do a search on google for gadgetworld I am listed about 10th, but that is only my homepage introduction before entering the os-commerce bit. I have gone down the list and although I submitted the whole site to thee search engines including www.gadgetworldonline.com/catalog it still fails to be listed.

 

This could be a huge problem for us, as most of our traffic is generated through search engines.

 

Can anyone advise or give their views on this subject please?

 

Best Regards

James Anthony

www.gadgetworldonline.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GadgetWorldOnline - A Whole World of Gadgets

www.gadgetworldonline.com

 

Tel. +44(0)161 612 2268

E-mail. [email protected]

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

You need to set it up to use MySQL as the session holder and remove the session id from the URL. Google won't index advertisements and the session id makes your entire site look like an advertisement.

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mpdaddy

mpdaddy

Posted
Posted

Wayne

 

There are osCommerce websites listed in the search engines. My website is one of them. If you go to google and search for "abcshopper site:www.abcshopper.com" (without the quotes) you will see I have all of my pages indexed. I am the first listing for many keywords and my site has a rank of 5/10. Example: Search Google for "Creative Labs Inspire 4.1 4400" (once again without the quotes). You will see my site listed first. Take the 4.1 or 4400 out and you will notice I am listed second or third.

 

I accomplished this two ways.

 

First I added the code (explained in earlier posts) to my html_output.php file. This had great results. Although Google indexed my site completely, I did not seem to rank that high in the search results.

 

Second I deleted the code I added to the html_output.php file and added a link on my front page to my allprods.php (also explained in earlier posts). This worked even better. I was completely indexed and I ranked very high in search results compared to the month before. This I feel is the best way to go.

 

Please note that I made a mod that displayed product information in the page title also. I don't recall seeing the actual code, but Linda McGrath (hope that's right :) ) made a contribution that allows you to do this.

 

Do a search for Google on this site and read everything you can about the subject. Try the allprods.php contribution and see how it goes. The hard part is waiting to see if the Googlebot will index you. They stop by me usually the last few days in the month. It might be different for your site though. Watch your server logs carefully and cross your fingers.

 

Also note, as of 5:00 A.M. 10-18-02, I have received 4666 visitors from Google, 450 visitors from Yahoo, and numerous visitors from other search engines. This is with only 449 products.

 

Good Luck

 

Regards

Wayne

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mpdaddy

mpdaddy

Posted
Posted

Boy I wish we could edit our posts. That was meant for magicant and not for Wayne Luke.

 

Anyway I did a search for "gadget site:www.gadgetworldonline.com" and your website does show up on Google. This means your site was visited by the Googlebot and will probably be visited during the next index. If you do as I said, you should get fully indexed and start getting visitors shortly after that.

 

You should also consider submitting your site for review at ODP http://dmoz.org/. You need to be careful here though. Make sure you submit to the correct category. Your site will be visited by a human (not a web bot) and if they like it, they will list it in their directory. This will help you get a better page rank, because many, many site use ODP search results on their websites. This was the first and only directory/search engine I have ever submitted to.

 

Regards

Wayne

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psychedelik

psychedelik

Posted
Posted
Wayne

Second I deleted the code I added to the html_output.php file and added a link on my front page to my allprods.php (also explained in earlier posts). This worked even better. I was completely indexed and I ranked very high in search results compared to the month before. This I feel is the best way to go.

 

congrats on the excellent results! one question though, if you direct the bots to allprod.php, wound't that be the only page that got indexed? from testing the "Creative Labs Inspire 4.1 4400", it doesn't appear like so...how do the bots work anyway??

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mpdaddy

mpdaddy

Posted
Posted

I am not sure exactly how the bots work. I only know they were able to index my entire website without any additional coding other than what I mentioned earlier. I tested it three ways.

 

First month: Basic osCommerce install with little code modification.

Result: Only front page, contact us, privacy policy, etc and a few category pages indexed. No visitors from Google.

 

Second month: Added code as stated in earlier posts to html_output.php.

Result: All pages indexed. Not ranked high in search results and a few hundred visitors, no sales.

 

Third month (this month): Removed code from html_output.php and added link (not tep_href_link but direct http://www.abcshopper.com/allprods.php) to allprods.php.

Result: All pages indexed and thousands of visitors and many, many sales so far this month.

 

The results tell me that allprods.php gives the best result. This may be deceiving though. Maybe Google only found the product pages this time, but kept the other indexed pages from last month in their db. I don't know for sure. As I said, I am unsure exactly how they work.

 

Feel free to contact me by email if you prefer.

 

Regards

Wayne

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syscon

syscon

Posted
Posted
You need to set it up to use MySQL as the session holder and remove the session id from the URL. Google won't index advertisements and the session id makes your entire site look like an advertisement.

 

Can somebody pls. explain how to do it exactly?

How to setup MySQL as a session holder to remove session ID from URL?

 

Joseph :roll:

#Joseph

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magicant

magicant

Posted
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Thank you all for all the help.

 

Can you plz explain one thing...whats cvs???

 

I see the snapshots and all these cvs folders...but what are they???!?

 

Thanks!

Anthony

www.gadgetworldonline.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GadgetWorldOnline - A Whole World of Gadgets

www.gadgetworldonline.com

 

Tel. +44(0)161 612 2268

E-mail. [email protected]

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Ian-San

Ian-San

Posted
Posted
Can you plz explain one thing...whats cvs???

 

An incredibly powerful method of tracking changes to the official code by showing historical changes between any one version and any other version, file by file.

 

What you see in the forums is unofficial discussion and help which you use at your own risk. If it is picked up by the core team, it might get put into the latest development release and so will also be shown in CVS with a 1 line explanation of each change.

 

So the latest version shown in CVS of every file matches the version shown in the latest snapshot. And if you missed a few updates, you can easily track them by using CVS and doing a diff on your version of a file and the latest.

 

See it in action here:

 

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/tep/

Ian-san

Flawlessnet

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magicant

magicant

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mpdaddy said:

 

First I added the code (explained in earlier posts) to my html_output.php file. This had great results. Although Google indexed my site completely, I did not seem to rank that high in the search results.

 

Where do I find this code? and do I just add it?

 

i'm not a massive php coder...I can only just find my way around ! :)

 

Must I delete any code from the output.php file?

 

Then link on frontpage to AllProds.php or something?

 

Thank you

Anthony

www.gadgetworldonline.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GadgetWorldOnline - A Whole World of Gadgets

www.gadgetworldonline.com

 

Tel. +44(0)161 612 2268

E-mail. [email protected]

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syscon

syscon

Posted
Posted
to remove session ID from URL?

 

Take a look at the last post on this :

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/viewtopic.php...p?p=69781#69781

 

We are hoping to have an official OS solution to this issue in CVS soon. The problem is being looked into. :D

 

This solution has a side effect, your customer can not add item to the basket and you can not login.

I tried to login after making the change and I couldn't. You you defiantly want to make this change back and enable that session ID.

We need to look for another solution.

 

Joseph

http://www.sysconcept.ca

#Joseph

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Ian-San

Ian-San

Posted
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Joseph

 

Can you please try to add a product to the basket in my store without log-on to see if you get the same problem? If you don't, then there might be an issue with your installation. If you do, then we may have another issue to solve here.

 

Thanks

 

http://nowsayit.com[/url]

Ian-san

Flawlessnet

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syscon

syscon

Posted
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Joseph

 

Can you please try to add a product to the basket in my store without log-on to see if you get the same problem? If you don't, then there might be an issue with your installation. If you do, then we may have another issue to solve here.

 

Thanks

 

http://nowsayit.com[/url]

 

I went to your web page and I can not add item the the basket. And this has nothing to do with my browser as I used Linux with Mozilla and Windwos with IE same effect.

"Your Shopping Basket is empty!" :?:

 

So changing session ID (SID) this way does not work.

In addition I test it on my internal server at http://sysconcept.ath.cx this chane and I can not even login.

 

Joseph

#Joseph

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Ian-San

Ian-San

Posted
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Joseph

 

The problem seems to be with my store set-up and not the SID fix. You have set your browser to block all cookies. When I did this, I could not log-on to my store even when I completely removed the SID fix and could see the session IDs in the url.

 

However, you will be pleased to know that I could use your store!

 

OS should work with or without cookies so I dont know what the problem is. I am storing session ids in MySql which makes it even more strange. As when I block the cookies, the session ids do not get stored in MySql.

Ian-san

Flawlessnet

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syscon

syscon

Posted
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Ian,

 

I just check and your are correct.

By default most of the people have cookies turn "OFF", I only have my cookies turn ON when I do some banking.

I tried to add an item on your web page with cookies turn OFF and I couldn't. I turn the cookies ON and it worked.

 

I don't know where the problem is but you should work on it to fix it as most people have cookies turn OFF in their browser and it they try to add something the basket nothing is happening (basket is empty) and there is even no warning to advice them to turn the cookies ON.

 

If you need anything from our webpage pls. let me know off the forum and I'll help you.

 

Regards,

Joseph

#Joseph

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wizardsandwars

wizardsandwars

Posted
Posted

I can confirm that my site doesn't work when the cookies are blocked also.

 

I'm sure it is not this hack, because when cookies are blocked, the SID is in the url.

 

However, it is strange that all of us are having the same problem.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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wizardsandwars

wizardsandwars

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Well, I restored the html_output.php to the original, taking out the hack for bots, and I still can not add a product to the cart if I do not have cookies enabled.

 

Obviously, it is something else that we have all either installed or added.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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syscon

syscon

Posted
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Go to Administration: Configuration: My Store:

and check if you have "Use Search-Engine Safe URLs (still in development)" disabled (false).

If this feature is turn ON you will not be able to add products to your cart in development osComm. ver.2.2

 

Joseph :)

#Joseph

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wizardsandwars

wizardsandwars

Posted
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Syscon,

 

Yes, you are EXACTLY right.

 

This was the problem, as I had this set to 'true'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: As of Oct 2006, I'm not as active in this forum as I used to be, but I still work with osC quite a bit.

If you have a question about any of my posts here, your best bet is to contact me though either Email or PM in my profile, and I'll be happy to help.

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mpdaddy

mpdaddy

Posted
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This is exactly what I did to the html_output.php.

 

Find this code

    if ( (SEARCH_ENGINE_FRIENDLY_URLS == 'true') && ($search_engine_safe == true) ) {

     while (strstr($link, '&&')) $link = str_replace('&&', '&', $link);



     $link = str_replace('?', '/', $link);

     $link = str_replace('&', '/', $link);

     $link = str_replace('=', '/', $link);

   }



   return $link;

 }

 

and change it to this

    if ( (SEARCH_ENGINE_FRIENDLY_URLS == 'true') && ($search_engine_safe == true) ) {

     while (strstr($link, '&&')) $link = str_replace('&&', '&', $link);



     $link = str_replace('?', '/', $link);

     $link = str_replace('&', '/', $link);

     $link = str_replace('=', '/', $link);

   }

   // Append the session id string to the URL

if (eregi("Googlebot",getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT")) || eregi("googlebot",getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT"))) {

$sess = NULL;

}

   return $link;

 }

 

There is no code to delete or edit. Just adding this

    // Append the session id string to the URL

if (eregi("Googlebot",getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT")) || eregi("googlebot",getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT"))) {

$sess = NULL;

}

to the file. If you need to add other bots, just add it after $sess = NULL;

}. I hope that helps clarify it a little. I personally prefer the allprods.php method.

 

Regards

Wayne

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