X-Cart forums

[starwest]

Can you explain how CDSEO makes use of the 'canonical tag'?

[Jon]

The CDSEO url is listed in the canonical tag. A page can be accessed by several different urls, for example:
http://www.example.com/page.html
http://www.example.com/page.html?sort=X
http://www.example.com/page.html?somevar=X
http://www.example.com/page.html?blahblahblah

The possibilities are endless. CDSEO puts the canonical tag of http://www.example.com/page.html on the page, so whenever any one of the infinite other possibilities are accessed by search engines, they consolidate all of the page rank to the one url.

[retrtrtrytrutru]

Hi Jon,

I have created a CSV file to update our 5000+ categories but I get this error: Error: Invalid CDSEO Type specified. Here's the first part of the CSV file:

cdseoReplaceID;cdseoType;cdseoTitle;cdseoLinkTitle;cdseoUrl;cdseoKeyword;cdseoDescription;cdseoDisabledUrl
375;category;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 300 lamp - QualityLamps B.V.;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 300 lamp ;TA-TRIUMPH-ADLER-300-lamp;;;
17294;category;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 320 lamp - QualityLamps B.V.;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 320 lamp ;TA-TRIUMPH-ADLER-320-lamp;;;
376;category;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 370 lamp - QualityLamps B.V.;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 370 lamp ;TA-TRIUMPH-ADLER-370-lamp;;;
342;category;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 380 lamp - QualityLamps B.V.;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 380 lamp ;TA-TRIUMPH-ADLER-380-lamp;;;
348;category;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 710 lamp - QualityLamps B.V.;TA (TRIUMPH-ADLER) 710 lamp ;TA-TRIUMPH-ADLER-710-lamp;;;

Can't see anything wrong personally, I checked the field names and they correspond to the export file. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for any help!

[retrtrtrytrutru]

Anyone else has an idea what I am doing wrong? Import should be fairly straightforward I would think. I really need to get this up and running this week. Thanks in advance.

[retrtrtrytrutru]

Why don't I receive a response? Also via WebsiteCM no response at all. What's going on? I need to finish this because we just launched our new website and I am worried Google will start indexing old links. Nobody knows how to import via CSV? Does anyone have an example file? I can't find the info on the website, only that it's easy to do.. well not for me. Even when I export the categories SEO data and try to import it again it says url > Error: Invalid CDSEO Type specified...

[retrtrtrytrutru]

Jon, where are you? I fixed the CSV problem, apparently CDSEO Pro does not accept ; as delimiter and you need to use , as delimiter instead. You should really mention this or improve CDSEO Pro because when I upload a CSV to X-Cart to update product or anything elso it works fine. Anyway, a new problem and an urgent one:

I found that when a category has " P" (spaceP) in its name you get a page not found error, I suspect it has something to so with the problem mentioned earlier in this thread. I tried adding the "WCM - Modify _p urls" code to cdseo_config.php but this doesn't fix it or I'm doing something wrong. This is a serious flaw in CDSEO Pro and my enthusiasm about CDSEO has dropped a lot to be honest. When I reported the problem with the CSV file to WebsiteCM it took them 4 days to respond and then their answer was wrong. They told me my CSV was corrupt, yeah right...

Sorry to be so harsh Jon but it's unacceptable to have to wait days and days for help when you're running a live website. And these CSV and _P errors are not something you would expect to encounter in a recommended X-Cart mod.. Another thing that bothers me is that you charge money for updates of the software. I bought the last update, 1.3.6 I believe it was, for “bing.com” support and paid $35. I bought the update because I thought maybe it would fix my CSV problem because I got no support but it didn’t work. Anyway, I think you shouldn’t charge money for such a minor update. Support for new search engines should be something that all your customers can benefit from, without having to pay extra.

Anyway, as you can read I am frustrated. I hope everything is ok with you Jon and you have a fix for my current problem. Look forward to hearing from you, until then I would not recommend CDSEO Pro to others.

Edit, extra:

I found that the problem with the page not found error also happens with categories that don't have the -P in their name. We sell projector lamps and I include the codes of these lamps in the URL. When the lamp contains -P in its name the problems also happens, the following link for examples don't work:

http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Fujitsu-LPF-C211-lamp-LPF-P767.html?&manid=2850
http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-PX10-lamp-LMP-P202.html?&manid=6150

And these, for example, do work:

http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Fujitsu-LPF-D711-lamp-LPF-QLD1WW.html?&manid=2850
http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-SC60-lamp-LMP-600.html?&manid=6150

Edit 2:

I have done more research and I think I have narrowed down the problem; when the URL ends with Pxxx where the xxx stand for a random number, the page cannot be displayed. Not sure where this problem comes from, but check these examples:

http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-S500-lamp-PK-PJ500.html?&manid=6150 (works)
http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-FX41-lamp-LMP-P260.html?manid=6150 (page cannot be found)

I can fix this problem, for now when I do an export in CDSEO Pro and replace every -P with P but it's not a pretty fix. I am also thinking of making every URL lowercase, I read that's better for SEO purposes. So, it might be that the links I posted will not work anymore because I will have fixed/worked around the problem myself I will for example change:

http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-PX11-lamp-LMP-P202.html?&manid=6150 to http://www.qualitylamps.eu/sony-vplpx11-lamp-lmpp202.html?&manid=6150

Any thoughts on this highly appreciated of course.

[necroflux]

Jon,

Any way to have CDSEO edit the minicart links as well?

[necroflux]

Retryrtrytrrutryturu,

Your problem is the way you're forming links:

http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-...ml?&manid=6150 (works)
http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-...tml?manid=6150 (page cannot be found)

In the first link you have a ?&manid=6150, which doesn't make sense but is working because your server is throwing away the ? and looking at just the &manid=6150. In the second one, you just have a ?, which normally would be fine except there's already an ? in the URL that you don't see - CDSEO covers it up. that Sony-VPLxxx.html actually contains "?productid=482378", CDSEO's script rewrites it as such behind the scenes - so you want to follow any .html with a &variable=, not ?variable=. Make sense?


Edit - just tested it on your site, just using &manid=6150 wasn't working either, so I think you need to look at your .htaccess file to see if there are any rewrite rules causing problems.

[retrtrtrytrutru]

Originally Posted by necroflux

Edit - just tested it on your site, just using &manid=6150 wasn't working either, so I think you need to look at your .htaccess file to see if there are any rewrite rules causing problems.

Dear necroflux, thanks for the input. I know the &?manid= is not the problem since if you remove this whole part and enter the URL without it, it still fails. The problem comes from links ending with -Pxxx which is throwing X-Cart or CDSEO Pro off. I have now corrected the links as such and they are working fine now:

http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-FX41-lamp-LMP-P260.html?manid=6150 changed to
http://www.qualitylamps.eu/Sony-VPL-FX41-lamp-LMPP260.html?manid=6150

Notice the difference is in LMP-P260, changed to LMPP260. I don't know if this problem comes from X-Cart of CDSEO Pro. The ?manid= part is a custom mod which is needed to show the manufacturer image on the page and in the H1 title on the page but if I could drop this part and still keep its functunality that would of course be great but I have no idea how to do this (so hide the "?manid=XXXX" part completely but still keep the manufacturer image on the page and in the H1 title). Thanks again for any input

Ps. I did get a response from WebsiteCM but they told me to upgrade to the latest version. Not exactly helpful since I am already running the latest version and then they advised me to do the SQL patch to replace _p with -p, also not related to my problem.

[Jon]

I opened the csv you provided in excel and it was not delimited. I took the same information, delimited it, and it imported, which lead me to believe the export was corrupted or perhaps you were using a very old version of microsoft excel which was reformatting the information.

We have a 25% upgrade policy after 3 months of free upgrades which is standard among many of the vendors in the upgrade community. This policy helps us to stay in business while paying for modules to be updated and compatible with continuous x-cart updates.

While usually we are much more prompt with our replies, for various reasons our support is currently not as prompt as usual though we are doing the best we can.

We gave you a download link to the latest version as when support tickets are issued we can't always know which version the person is running, and so providing that becomes pro-active. By default the 1.3.6 version will no longer auto-populate with the -p format indicating that you either customized yours to use -p or you were using an older version of the auto-population. The issue in all your urls that are not working is that the -p matches CDSEO's pagination and changing to _p will correct this. The sql patch provided is a way of doing that quickly instead of with csv.