Google SEO and osC Sort

[Guest]

To Whom it May Concern:

 

Thank-you for taking a moment to read this topic. My goal is to acquire a general consensus of what other osCommerce users think about indexing sorted pages. To explain this I will be using my site as an example.

 

Ex.1 - Manufacturer's page for Puma. - Shows all products by manufacturer.

http://www.13thgreen.../puma-m-96.html

 

Ex.2 - Manufacturer's page for Puma Sorted - Shows only mens golf belts my Puma

http://www.13thgreen...r_id=68&sort=4a

 

Please take a look at the meta tags for each page. By default they are the same. Many of you have probably experienced a duplicate issue as a result of this. To solve my duplicate issue I used a FWR Media's outdated modification to include a NOINDEX tag on sorted pages. However, I got to thinking that maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe its simply better to change the meta tags so that its basically its own page. In terms of SEO what do you guys think?

[Hotclutch]

I don't think the noindex tag is a bad idea. Because it is essentially duplicate content just sorted otherwise. I would use the <link rel="canonical"> tag on your sort pages and consolidate all your page rank flow onto 1 page.

[Guest]

Thanks for the response Hotclutch. I have to agree with your analogy of the info being duplicate content. Taking the example one step further. Lets say someone search for "puma golf belts". Now what would be more relevant, a page that contained all the puma products, or a page that contained all the puma golf belts (sorted)? This has been the thing that has been bothering me.

[Hotclutch]

Thanks for the response Hotclutch. I have to agree with your analogy of the info being duplicate content. Taking the example one step further. Lets say someone search for "puma golf belts". Now what would be more relevant, a page that contained all the puma products, or a page that contained all the puma golf belts (sorted)? This has been the thing that has been bothering me.

 

 

OK. You need to modify your oscommerce somehow to give you unique page titles and meta on that filter ids. At the moment you have none. If you click through the filters the page titles are all the same. But it is not the sort parameter that is important, it is the filter_id.