3 replies to this topic

[anews]

Hi everybody!

Just had a thought... I usually make adding to shopping cart as a normal link (sth. like "<a href="/cart.php?action=ADD&articleId=25&quantity=1">add to cart</a>) - but from the SE point of view this is just a normal link to a normal page, right? So to the SE these pages are just normal (though not very well ranking ) pages. I could tell the SEs that cart.php is off limits by using robots.txt, but - do they care? Will I rank better for it? Is it worth my time and the risk that I might make a mistake ("don't fix it if it ain't broken")? I must be getting old, a few years ago I would just fix it...

I'd appreciate any thought on this...

Anze

[bobsledbob]

A shopping cart traditionally uses cookies or some other mechanism to keep track of the user's session. This allows the user to login, store personal information on your site, add items to their cart, etc.

A search engine wouldn't be able to log in or set cookies, so I'm curious what is displayed to your user when they don't have cookies set when clicking on the link? Probably some sort of login page, right? This is what the search engine will see as well.

Since they don't set cookies and can't fill out a form, all of the links to add an item to your cart would look the same to a search engine robot. Some say multiple urls of the exact same content can be a bad SEO strategy, which is what you'd have.

Now, say that even by some miraculous design, a cookie or other session tracking information isn't required to add an item to your shopping cart, and the user doesn't have to login to do so. Then, what would happen is that the search engine would have just created a new shopping cart in your database and populated it with an item. Of course, a search engine isn't going to be purchasing the item, and so you're left with abandoned carts in your database. While this scenario is not very likely, I do know a few shopping carts that work this way.

So, to answer your question, yes it's probably a good idea to include the cart url for exclusion in your robots.txt file. Remember though that a lot of (evil) robots don't bother reading the robots.txt file and instead just harvest everything they can from your site.

[Alan Perkins]

I could tell the SEs that cart.php is off limits by using robots.txt, but - do they care? Will I rank better for it? Is it worth my time and the risk that I might make a mistake ("don't fix it if it ain't broken")? I must be getting old, a few years ago I would just fix it...

Definitely fix it - it is broken!

You really don't want those URLs to be indexed. If they are indexed, then each searcher visiting your site will, on entering your site, add the item in question to their shopping cart! You might think that's great, but they won't - and they are likely to leave, confused or angry.

Also, by excluding pages you don't want to be indexed, you give the spider more opportunity to see pages you do want to be indexed. A spider will only spend so much time on your site, particularly if it sees a lot of essentially duplicated content.

[Ron Carnell]

Also, by excluding pages you don't want to be indexed, you give the spider more opportunity to see pages you do want to be indexed. A spider will only spend so much time on your site, particularly if it sees a lot of essentially duplicated content.

One hundred percent agreement!