Is anyone else having trouble getting the new pages indexed? I have a newish WP site and added PT last week. The top-level PT page is now indexed by Google, but it won't go further. I've seen googlebot visiting the pages and I have links to the pages from my sidebars on all WP pages. I did find a canonical tag on all the PT pages (see below). I don't know where it's coming from but I wonder if it's to blame. I've done some research and found mention of a default canonical tag being added to WP. I don't have any odd plugins installed. Just wondering if anyone else has seen this and knows the solution? Seems like it could be an issue for others as well.
in head of page - all href pointing to my PT main page
<link rel='canonical' href='http://mysite.com/pt-home/' />
Well, after further research I found a solution. You might want to consider this for the plugin. I added this code to the top of pto_common.php . There might be a better place...?
remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');
Will post back with results to see if it helps or not.
This seems to work, but I think it is also removing the canonical tag from non-PT pages. It seems like we should be able to leave it in place for non-PT pages, but remove it for PT. It's good for now, but if you can sort it out that would be great.
Thank you!
(still not indexed past PT home, but should be soon)
I'm interested in hearing the results of this topic too!
Dear Dave,I added "remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');" as you said. But google not only did not index more pages, but reduced two pages. There are only one page indexed now.In the past there are three.
Frank
Hello Frank,
It's probably best to wait a little longer as search engine coverage can vary intermittently; also an XML sitemap for plugin generated pages is on the ToDo list which should help!
Cheers,
David.
FYI - No additional pages have been indexed. I even wrote a blog post on the site with links to several of the pages, hoping to break the seal on the product pages, but nothing yet. The tag is definitely gone, but Google has not decided to refresh. I'm thinking of renaming my PT home container page to see if that will help.
Hello gregor,
It's been a very long established pattern for Google that the home page for a brand new site is indexed very quickly; but that a deep crawl is not made until some while later; subject to the usual criteria, quality; relevant and trusted back-links etc. so I would advise against making any immediate changes and concentrate on the established best practice which is to focus on adding value (by your own content and concentrating on creating good price comparisons by using Product Mapping as much as possible) - that will all help in the long run...!
Cheers,
David.
I know what you're saying, but all my other pages have been indexed within 24 hours - blog posts, WP pages, etc.. I have a feeling the canonical tag has somehow "stuck". Wish someone else would post some results here.
Thanks,
Gregor
Hi Gregor,
Perhaps in that case it would be worth changing the container permalink as that should then appear as a completely new page (and of course the canonical link is no longer present) so that could help "refresh" things...
Cheers,
David.
Update on this - I didn't rename my container because I was afraid that if I did, then Google would index everything the following day and I'd be in a mess. I was tired of waiting, so I went to google webmaster tools and ran "fetch as googlebot" on one of the pages. Then it gives the option to submit that page to the index. I did that, and after another day or two one of the pages was indexed. I don't know if the fetch really had an effect or not. Now, a week later, there are 4 pages indexed. Still very slow going, but at least it's going. Now it's probably just a matter of Google delays. I would expect to see the number grow soon. Hopefully!!
Gregor
It would be best to have a canonical url for each product page, but it will be a nightmare to add into the wordpress plugin. I'm looking forward for the next week's update before I make any modification!
Gael
Hi,
Added the line just before the closing tag:
remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');but the canonical link is still there on my pages.
Hi Marco,
Try a CTRL+F5 to reload just in-case you're seeing cached pages...
Cheers,
David.
Hi Marco,
Can you let me know any other plugins you're running?
Thanks,
David.
I deactivated them but still it doesn't show. So I thought I should try out the default theme. And then the canonical links go away. So it seems like my theme (Genesis with childtheme Prose) is somehow interfering.
Any suggestions on this?
Hi,
I could remove the canonical links from my theme. But then they are removed from all my pages including the Wordpress generated ones. It is possible to make a specific page template which has the canonical link removed.
Do you know if PT plugin can be made to use a specific Wordpress page template?
Hi Marco,
I'm looking into this tomorrow as I work on the BETA2 release of the plugin - thanks for the info above that will be helpful in determining where the canonical header is being generated;
Cheers,
David.
On both my PT for Wordpress websites I have used XML Sitemaps Unlimited Sitemaps Generator software, which you just buy once and can then use it on as many websites as you like. The advantage of this software is that it will integrate all your Wordpress and PT pages into one sitemap, with the right settings. They have a Free Online Sitemap Generator service at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com if you want to check the software out before you buy it. The free version will parse everything, but to avoid memory allocation problems the paid version can be set to exclude certain criteria.
Hope this helps for those of you having problems,
Stephen
Thanks for that, Stephen.
Next weeks release with the canonical issue fixed and sitemap generator should also help considerably!
Cheers,
David.
I have been waiting for google to index the pages after fixing the canonical issue, but so far there are only 16 pages indexed. I would like to rename the Product Base HREF and see if that will get the pages indexed. I can easily rename the HREF, but I would also like to redirect the old page names to the new ones. I tried this using htaccess, but it gives me an error that the redirect is looping. I noticed that the PT redirects are handled inside WordPress somehow (assuming), so I don't know if htaccess can be used or not. Do you know if there is a way for me to redirect my old product HREF to the new one? Something like mysite.com/product/xxxxx to mysite.com/item/xxxxx . Since I don't have very many pages indexed it's not a huge deal, but if this is a simple setting I would like to do it.
Thanks,
Gregor
Hi Gregor,
A redirect like that needs to go immediately after the RewriteBase line, have a go with:
RewriteRule ^product/(.*)$ item/$1 [L,R=301]Cheers,
David.
Hi David
I am using BETA 2 and having the same issue with google indexing. Iz BETA 2 already got all the fix which are discussed above?
If not, then what should I do get my pages indexed in Google webmaster.
Regards
Hassan
Hello Hassan,
BETA2 _does_ have the fix described above in which the rel_canonical hook is removed on dynamically generated pages; but several users have reported that their theme or another plugin is still generating canonical and other meta tags that need to be suppressed on PriceTapestry.org generated pages.
If when viewing a /product/ page on your WordPress site you are still seeing a canonical header pointing (incorrectly) to the container permalink page then this is probably what is happening on your installation.
I have worked out a tidy solution to this which I will be releasing in BETA3, probably Wednesday next week (26th Oct); along with;
- extra fields place holders (for example if you have added additional fields to your database such as "shipping"
- PriceTapestry.org generated canonical headers
- Price/Currency order control
Cheers,
David.
Hello Gregor,
You're absolutely right, a canonical to the container page permalink is being inserted into the header of any of the pages dynamically generated by the plugin, and that would definitely prevent indexing.
There is an easy fix straight away, simply add the following to the very last line of pto.php (in wp-content/plugins/pto) on the line before the closing PHP tag:
remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');That will prevent canonical creation globally, but first thing next week i'll work out the best way to ensure that this override is only applied to the dynamically generated pages. Thanks for pointing this out!
Cheers,
David.