Is there a way to hide the URL key for each page in Magento? For example a site URL www.test.com/Logitech-bluetooth-keyboard. Can I disable or hide the URL key so it is www.test.com for every page?
I'm using Magento Community 1.7.0
The short answer is: No. I'm curious why you would want to do something like that, from a user's perspective it would be bad usability, and very bad SEO since you would only be able to Google your homepage.
What you could do is to rewrite the whole thing so all links would load Ajax requests instead. This would take some serious time and effort and I don't think it's worth it because I fail to see the benefits of it.
Related
I'm developing a SPA web app and it will support various languages. It is build with AngularJS and I am using angular-translate to provide i18n.
But I am struggling a little bit with how the URL structure should be. I do no plan on using either gTLDs nor ccTLDs, so that leaves me with three options.
Use query params: ?locale=en-us
Use url paths: /en-us/page
Store the chosen locale in localStorage or a cookie
The first option is a no-go according to Google's guidelines for web apps SEO. So that leaves me with the last two options.
I have a hard time deciding which is more beneficial, though I am inclined to believe that using url paths would probably be more crawler friendly.
P.S: Not sure if this is the best place to ask such a question either.
The second option is your safest bet as according to https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/59652/what-happens-if-i-try-to-set-a-cookie-on-a-bot cookies are ignored. You can test this yourself by going to the Google Console and fetching your website.
As of now most crawlers ignore cookies and DO NOT execute JavaScript. This means that they usually just download the html and make their judgements from there.
Some developers get around the no javascript problem by pre-rendering parts of their content. I haven't done it personally but you might want to check out https://prerender.io/
Edit
As rolandjitsu mentioned google crawls and executes javascript content.
You should go with second option: provide the language tag (and, optionally, region subtags) in the URL path as first segment.
For the simple reason that it allows you, visitors, and bots to link to specific translations.
I'm curious as to whether or not link shorteners like tinyurl, bitly, etc., affect backlinking in any way.
For instance, the gplus.to link shortener shortens your google+ page. So that will change your Google+ link anchor from:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/73418324312440134122432433432/posts
to
https://gplus.to/mycompanyname
Is this necessarily a bad thing for SEO backlinking purposes? Will the googlebot not "recognize" the shortened link and will it not aid my SERPS?
I suppose the same goes for everything. If I shorten a longer link to my company's website by using something like bitly.com ... Does this effectively make it "not a backlink", as opposed to if I posted the entire link (http://www.company.com/products/metals/default.aspx)? Any guidance in this regard would be greatly appreciated!
It depends on URL shortening service, if they are using HTTP 301/302 for redirects, than google will be good with it, however, few search engines also use words from url kinda
www.demo.com/how-to-search-better
Changes to
www.bit.ly/12345
Doesn't make sense to search engines or to the user either
I've just noticed that the long, convoluted Facebook URLs that we're used to now look like this:
http://www.facebook.com/example.profile#!/pages/Another-Page/123456789012345
As far as I can recall, earlier this year it was just a normal URL-fragment-like string (starting with #), without the exclamation mark. But now it's a shebang or hashbang (#!), which I've previously only seen in shell scripts and Perl scripts.
The new Twitter URLs now also feature the #! symbols. A Twitter profile URL, for example, now looks like this:
http://twitter.com/#!/BoltClock
Does #! now play some special role in URLs, like for a certain Ajax framework or something since the new Facebook and Twitter interfaces are now largely Ajaxified?
Would using this in my URLs benefit my Web application in any way?
This technique is now deprecated.
This used to tell Google how to index the page.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
This technique has mostly been supplanted by the ability to use the JavaScript History API that was introduced alongside HTML5. For a URL like www.example.com/ajax.html#!key=value, Google will check the URL www.example.com/ajax.html?_escaped_fragment_=key=value to fetch a non-AJAX version of the contents.
The octothorpe/number-sign/hashmark has a special significance in an URL, it normally identifies the name of a section of a document. The precise term is that the text following the hash is the anchor portion of an URL. If you use Wikipedia, you will see that most pages have a table of contents and you can jump to sections within the document with an anchor, such as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing identifies the page and Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test is the anchor. The reason that Facebook and other Javascript-driven applications (like my own Wood & Stones) use anchors is that they want to make pages bookmarkable (as suggested by a comment on that answer) or support the back button without reloading the entire page from the server.
In order to support bookmarking and the back button, you need to change the URL. However, if you change the page portion (with something like window.location = 'http://raganwald.com';) to a different URL or without specifying an anchor, the browser will load the entire page from the URL. Try this in Firebug or Safari's Javascript console. Load http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald. Now in the Javascript console, type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald';
You will see the page refresh from the server. Now type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald#try_this';
Aha! No page refresh! Type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald#and_this';
Still no refresh. Use the back button to see that these URLs are in the browser history. The browser notices that we are on the same page but just changing the anchor, so it doesn't reload. Thanks to this behaviour, we can have a single Javascript application that appears to the browser to be on one 'page' but to have many bookmarkable sections that respect the back button. The application must change the anchor when a user enters different 'states', and likewise if a user uses the back button or a bookmark or a link to load the application with an anchor included, the application must restore the appropriate state.
So there you have it: Anchors provide Javascript programmers with a mechanism for making bookmarkable, indexable, and back-button-friendly applications. This technique has a name: It is a Single Page Interface.
p.s. There is a fourth benefit to this technique: Loading page content through AJAX and then injecting it into the current DOM can be much faster than loading a new page. In addition to the speed increase, further tricks like loading certain portions in the background can be performed under the programmer's control.
p.p.s. Given all of that, the 'bang' or exclamation mark is a further hint to Google's web crawler that the exact same page can be loaded from the server at a slightly different URL. See Ajax Crawling. Another technique is to make each link point to a server-accessible URL and then use unobtrusive Javascript to change it into an SPI with an anchor.
Here's the key link again: The Single Page Interface Manifesto
First of all: I'm the author of the The Single Page Interface Manifesto cited by raganwald
As raganwald has explained very well, the most important aspect of the Single Page Interface (SPI) approach used in FaceBook and Twitter is the use of hash # in URLs
The character ! is added only for Google purposes, this notation is a Google "standard" for crawling web sites intensive on AJAX (in the extreme Single Page Interface web sites). When Google's crawler finds an URL with #! it knows that an alternative conventional URL exists providing the same page "state" but in this case on load time.
In spite of #! combination is very interesting for SEO, is only supported by Google (as far I know), with some JavaScript tricks you can build SPI web sites SEO compatible for any web crawler (Yahoo, Bing...).
The SPI Manifesto and demos do not use Google's format of ! in hashes, this notation could be easily added and SPI crawling could be even easier (UPDATE: now ! notation is used and remains compatible with other search engines).
Take a look to this tutorial, is an example of a simple ItsNat SPI site but you can pick some ideas for other frameworks, this example is SEO compatible for any web crawler.
The hard problem is to generate any (or selected) "AJAX page state" as plain HTML for SEO, in ItsNat is very easy and automatic, the same site is in the same time SPI or page based for SEO (or when JavaScript is disabled for accessibility). With other web frameworks you can ever follow the double site approach, one site is SPI based and another page based for SEO, for instance Twitter uses this "double site" technique.
I would be very careful if you are considering adopting this hashbang convention.
Once you hashbang, you can’t go back. This is probably the stickiest issue. Ben’s post put forward the point that when pushState is more widely adopted then we can leave hashbangs behind and return to traditional URLs. Well, fact is, you can’t. Earlier I stated that URLs are forever, they get indexed and archived and generally kept around. To add to that, cool URLs don’t change. We don’t want to disconnect ourselves from all the valuable links to our content. If you’ve implemented hashbang URLs at any point then want to change them without breaking links the only way you can do it is by running some JavaScript on the root document of your domain. Forever. It’s in no way temporary, you are stuck with it.
You really want to use pushState instead of hashbangs, because making your URLs ugly and possibly broken -- forever -- is a colossal and permanent downside to hashbangs.
To have a good follow-up about all this, Twitter - one of the pioneers of hashbang URL's and single-page-interface - admitted that the hashbang system was slow in the long run and that they have actually started reversing the decision and returning to old-school links.
Article about this is here.
I always assumed the ! just indicated that the hash fragment that followed corresponded to a URL, with ! taking the place of the site root or domain. It could be anything, in theory, but it seems the Google AJAX Crawling API likes it this way.
The hash, of course, just indicates that no real page reload is occurring, so yes, it’s for AJAX purposes. Edit: Raganwald does a lovely job explaining this in more detail.
I've just noticed that the long, convoluted Facebook URLs that we're used to now look like this:
http://www.facebook.com/example.profile#!/pages/Another-Page/123456789012345
As far as I can recall, earlier this year it was just a normal URL-fragment-like string (starting with #), without the exclamation mark. But now it's a shebang or hashbang (#!), which I've previously only seen in shell scripts and Perl scripts.
The new Twitter URLs now also feature the #! symbols. A Twitter profile URL, for example, now looks like this:
http://twitter.com/#!/BoltClock
Does #! now play some special role in URLs, like for a certain Ajax framework or something since the new Facebook and Twitter interfaces are now largely Ajaxified?
Would using this in my URLs benefit my Web application in any way?
This technique is now deprecated.
This used to tell Google how to index the page.
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/
This technique has mostly been supplanted by the ability to use the JavaScript History API that was introduced alongside HTML5. For a URL like www.example.com/ajax.html#!key=value, Google will check the URL www.example.com/ajax.html?_escaped_fragment_=key=value to fetch a non-AJAX version of the contents.
The octothorpe/number-sign/hashmark has a special significance in an URL, it normally identifies the name of a section of a document. The precise term is that the text following the hash is the anchor portion of an URL. If you use Wikipedia, you will see that most pages have a table of contents and you can jump to sections within the document with an anchor, such as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing identifies the page and Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test is the anchor. The reason that Facebook and other Javascript-driven applications (like my own Wood & Stones) use anchors is that they want to make pages bookmarkable (as suggested by a comment on that answer) or support the back button without reloading the entire page from the server.
In order to support bookmarking and the back button, you need to change the URL. However, if you change the page portion (with something like window.location = 'http://raganwald.com';) to a different URL or without specifying an anchor, the browser will load the entire page from the URL. Try this in Firebug or Safari's Javascript console. Load http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald. Now in the Javascript console, type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald';
You will see the page refresh from the server. Now type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald#try_this';
Aha! No page refresh! Type:
window.location = 'http://minimal-github.gilesb.com/raganwald#and_this';
Still no refresh. Use the back button to see that these URLs are in the browser history. The browser notices that we are on the same page but just changing the anchor, so it doesn't reload. Thanks to this behaviour, we can have a single Javascript application that appears to the browser to be on one 'page' but to have many bookmarkable sections that respect the back button. The application must change the anchor when a user enters different 'states', and likewise if a user uses the back button or a bookmark or a link to load the application with an anchor included, the application must restore the appropriate state.
So there you have it: Anchors provide Javascript programmers with a mechanism for making bookmarkable, indexable, and back-button-friendly applications. This technique has a name: It is a Single Page Interface.
p.s. There is a fourth benefit to this technique: Loading page content through AJAX and then injecting it into the current DOM can be much faster than loading a new page. In addition to the speed increase, further tricks like loading certain portions in the background can be performed under the programmer's control.
p.p.s. Given all of that, the 'bang' or exclamation mark is a further hint to Google's web crawler that the exact same page can be loaded from the server at a slightly different URL. See Ajax Crawling. Another technique is to make each link point to a server-accessible URL and then use unobtrusive Javascript to change it into an SPI with an anchor.
Here's the key link again: The Single Page Interface Manifesto
First of all: I'm the author of the The Single Page Interface Manifesto cited by raganwald
As raganwald has explained very well, the most important aspect of the Single Page Interface (SPI) approach used in FaceBook and Twitter is the use of hash # in URLs
The character ! is added only for Google purposes, this notation is a Google "standard" for crawling web sites intensive on AJAX (in the extreme Single Page Interface web sites). When Google's crawler finds an URL with #! it knows that an alternative conventional URL exists providing the same page "state" but in this case on load time.
In spite of #! combination is very interesting for SEO, is only supported by Google (as far I know), with some JavaScript tricks you can build SPI web sites SEO compatible for any web crawler (Yahoo, Bing...).
The SPI Manifesto and demos do not use Google's format of ! in hashes, this notation could be easily added and SPI crawling could be even easier (UPDATE: now ! notation is used and remains compatible with other search engines).
Take a look to this tutorial, is an example of a simple ItsNat SPI site but you can pick some ideas for other frameworks, this example is SEO compatible for any web crawler.
The hard problem is to generate any (or selected) "AJAX page state" as plain HTML for SEO, in ItsNat is very easy and automatic, the same site is in the same time SPI or page based for SEO (or when JavaScript is disabled for accessibility). With other web frameworks you can ever follow the double site approach, one site is SPI based and another page based for SEO, for instance Twitter uses this "double site" technique.
I would be very careful if you are considering adopting this hashbang convention.
Once you hashbang, you can’t go back. This is probably the stickiest issue. Ben’s post put forward the point that when pushState is more widely adopted then we can leave hashbangs behind and return to traditional URLs. Well, fact is, you can’t. Earlier I stated that URLs are forever, they get indexed and archived and generally kept around. To add to that, cool URLs don’t change. We don’t want to disconnect ourselves from all the valuable links to our content. If you’ve implemented hashbang URLs at any point then want to change them without breaking links the only way you can do it is by running some JavaScript on the root document of your domain. Forever. It’s in no way temporary, you are stuck with it.
You really want to use pushState instead of hashbangs, because making your URLs ugly and possibly broken -- forever -- is a colossal and permanent downside to hashbangs.
To have a good follow-up about all this, Twitter - one of the pioneers of hashbang URL's and single-page-interface - admitted that the hashbang system was slow in the long run and that they have actually started reversing the decision and returning to old-school links.
Article about this is here.
I always assumed the ! just indicated that the hash fragment that followed corresponded to a URL, with ! taking the place of the site root or domain. It could be anything, in theory, but it seems the Google AJAX Crawling API likes it this way.
The hash, of course, just indicates that no real page reload is occurring, so yes, it’s for AJAX purposes. Edit: Raganwald does a lovely job explaining this in more detail.
For some mysterious reason, Google has indexed both these adresses, that lead to the same page:
/something/some-text-1055.html
and
/index.php?pg=something&id=1055
(short notice - the site has had friendly urls since its launch, I have no idea how google found the "index.php?" url - there are "unfriendly" urls only in the content management system, which is password-restricted)
What can I do to solve the situation? (I have around 1000 pages that are double-indexed.) Somebody told me to use "disallow: index.php?" in the robots.txt file.
Right or wrong? Any other suggestions?
You'd be surprised as how pervasive and quick the google bots are at indexing site content. That, combined with lots of CMS systems creating unintended pages/links making it likely that at some point those links were exposed is the most likely culprit. It's also possible your administration area isn't as secure as you think, the google bot got through that way.
The well-behaved, and google recommended, things to do here are
If possible, create 301 redirects from you query string style URLs to your canonical style URLs. That's you saying "hey there, web bot/browser, the content that used to be at this URL is now at this other URL"
Block the query string content in your robots.txt. That's like asking the spiders or other automated programs "Hey, please don't look at this stuff. These aren't the URLs you're looking for"
Google apparently allows you to specify a canonical URL now via a <link /> tag in the top of your page. Consider adding these in.
As to whether doing the well behaved things is the the "right" thing to do re: Google rankings ... who knows. Only "Google" knows how their algorithms work now, and will work in the future, and by Google, I mean a bunch of engineers and executives with conflicting goals on how search should work.
Google now offers a way to specify a page's canonical URL. You can use the following code in your HTML to tell Google your canonical URL:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish" />
You can read more about canonical URLs on Google on their blog post on the subject, here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
According to the blog post, Ask.com, Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo! all support the canonical tag.
If you use sitemap generators to submit to search engines, you'll want to disallow in them as well. They are likely where Google got your links, from crawling your folder and from checking your logs.
Better check what URI has been requested ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) and redirect if it was /index.php.
Changing robots.txt will not help, since the page is already indexed.
The best is to use a permanent redirect (301).
If you want to remove a page once indexed by Google the only way, more or less, is to make it return a 404 not found message.
Is it possible you're posting a form to a similar url and google is simply picking it up from the source?