SFL and Supplemental Results

[iceman]

Anyone have any ideas why Google lists the vast majority of my pages as ?supplemental results?? These pages have not been spidered in months.

My concern is that Google isn?t spidering any url?s created using CBS - Search Friendly Links (v4.57). The affected pages end in my product # (http://www.leather-temptations.com/page/L/PROD/15-100 (http://www.leather-temptations.com/page/L/PROD/15-100)) and not a normal file extension like ?.html? or the like. I don?t know whether SFL is in fact the reason but all signs point to Google not liking my SFL generated url?s I don't know whether MSN or Yahoo are deep crawling my site regularly but obviously Google is king and where I am most concerned.

In the past I had decent (top 20) rankings and now I am way down. Admittedly I have done very little with this site over the past year but I am now in the midst of adding a new catalog and as it is now I don?t expect that any of my new items will be indexed. Also, may of the old supplemental results will now be bad links as the products have been removed.

Questions: Are my concerns with SFL being the culprit justified? If so are there other solutions which will create friendlier url?s? Are any of the dynamic url issues solved with Merchant 5? This issue has me seriously looking into alternative shopping carts.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[jason - jmh web services]

Anyone have any ideas why Google lists the vast majority of my pages as ?supplemental results?? These pages have not been spidered in months.

My concern is that Google isn?t spidering any url?s created using CBS - Search Friendly Links (v4.57). The affected pages end in my product # (http://www.leather-temptations.com/page/L/PROD/15-100 (http://www.leather-temptations.com/page/L/PROD/15-100)) and not a normal file extension like ?.html? or the like. I don?t know whether SFL is in fact the reason but all signs point to Google not liking my SFL generated url?s I don't know whether MSN or Yahoo are deep crawling my site regularly but obviously Google is king and where I am most concerned.

In the past I had decent (top 20) rankings and now I am way down. Admittedly I have done very little with this site over the past year but I am now in the midst of adding a new catalog and as it is now I don?t expect that any of my new items will be indexed. Also, may of the old supplemental results will now be bad links as the products have been removed.

Questions: Are my concerns with SFL being the culprit justified? If so are there other solutions which will create friendlier url?s? Are any of the dynamic url issues solved with Merchant 5? This issue has me seriously looking into alternative shopping carts.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Have you blocked all search engines from your dynamic Miva Merchant urls with robots.txt? Google specifically expects you to server one type of link style (static or dynamic). This is one of the reasons you could end up in supplemental results. Seo information package below covers all this and includes a case study on this problem.

[iceman]

The way the site is designed I do not believe there are any Miva Merchant urls - all links within the site for both categories and products are coded to go to the SFL "short link". I don't think I would need to block search engines from dynamic url's that basically do not exist in the first place, would I????

[jason - jmh web services]

The way the site is designed I do not believe there are any Miva Merchant urls - all links within the site for both categories and products are coded to go to the SFL "short link". I don't think I would need to block search engines from dynamic url's that basically do not exist in the first place, would I????
Not sure. Maybe there are other avenues like outside links, product list, category breadcrumbs without sfl, etc. You need to check in Google.

[Barrett]

Wouldn't simply modifying his robots file to

Disallow: /Merchant2/

do the trick as compared to his current strings ?

Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=BASK&Store_Code=L
Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=OINF&Store_Code=L
Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=LOGN&Store_Code=L
Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=SRCH&Store_Code=L

[jason - jmh web services]

Wouldn't simply modifying his robots file to

Disallow: /Merchant2/

do the trick as compared to his current strings ?

Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=BASK&Store_Code=L
Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=OINF&Store_Code=L
Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=LOGN&Store_Code=L
Disallow: /Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=SRCH&Store_Code=L

/subdirectory/ covers everything including all files and other sub directories

[smallfri]

When installing SFL, will the old links still work? I want to install it on my live store, and I was affraid it might render things useless while I did.

Thanks

Russell

[jason - jmh web services]

When installing SFL, will the old links still work? I want to install it on my live store, and I was affraid it might render things useless while I did.

Thanks

Russell

Yes, but I would go with Ultimate Seo Links by Sebenza (http://www.jmhonline.net/usl4) instead.

[smallfri]

Jason,

In your professional opinion, is that worth upgrading from 4.13 to compiled? There scattered features in compiled modules that intrigue me, both nothing to make me take on the task of an upgrade.

thanks,

Russell

[jason - jmh web services]

Jason,

In your professional opinion, is that worth upgrading from 4.13 to compiled? There scattered features in compiled modules that intrigue me, both nothing to make me take on the task of an upgrade.

thanks,

Russell
Even without it, I would upgrade to 4.24 or v5. It is available in v5 (http://www.jmhonline.net/usl5) too.