URLs for product ordering not SEO friendly?

[EvanGR]

Hello,

Product ordering URLs are in the form of:

/by,product_sku
/by,category_name

etc...

These are picked up by Google (webmaster tools) as conflicts. Two questions:

1) Why are they not presented as URL parameters?

2) How can this be changed, or improve the way Google deals with them?

Thanks

[GJC Web Design]

/en/shop/default-pattern/by,product_sku.html has

<link href="http://test.xxx.com/en/shop/default-pattern.html" rel="canonical" />

the canonical is there so why is google indexing them

[EvanGR]

Maybe not indexing them... not entirely sure about that. But it does complain about duplicate page titles and meta descriptions...

[jjk]

Maybe not indexing them... not entirely sure about that. But it does complain about duplicate page titles and meta descriptions...

In their old search console I suppose. Sometimes there are good reasons for duplicate page titles. For example I have pages where the page title is an artist's name with content in several languages. I wouldn't change the artist's name just because Google recommends it. Something similar can happen when Google analyzes category pages. The category description on page 1 can be the same as on the following pages of the same category.

Nothing to worry about imho.

[EvanGR]

I have noticed that VM product category pages are not very much SEO friendly for google, despite our best efforts.

And I have noticed the improper VM sorting URL structure being picked up in the search results, occasionally.

Therefore, I would suggest (to the dev team) that the sorting URL structure follows an acceptable format (URL parameters instead of different URLs).

[jjk]

I have noticed that VM product category pages are not very much SEO friendly for google, despite our best efforts.
And I have noticed the improper VM sorting URL structure being picked up in the search results, occasionally.

Personally I don't care much about SEO for category views. Imho they mainly serve as paginated user-friendly links to the product pages. The important content which I want to be indexed in the search engines is on the product pages.

[jenkinhill]

The important content which I want to be indexed in the search engines is on the product pages.

I absolutely agree. To me the category page is just a route to the all important product.  The canonical link for category pages seeems logical to me and now the ability so set a Sef Alias for each category will help those who like to play with canonical urls.

[EvanGR]

Product pages are important BUT...

There are some pretty strong (SEO-wise) sites, which act as product listings/aggregators and dominate the top positions in the search results. These almost always dominate via 'category' pages.

Where I live, this phenomenon is very obvious. Try searching for a specific product in your country, and see how many google results are actually categories, and their order in the page.

[EvanGR]

A simple fast-fix (for now) to this issue, is to provide an optional 'noindex' directive for pages that contain ordering parameters. This should discourage search engines from indexing and having to deal with these result pages.