Unlimited Product Pages

[moon-boots]

While browsing through my Moz campaign, I noticed that my site is pulling up unlimited numbers of product pages even though no products appear on them. i.e.

http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia?page=16

http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia?page=100

http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia?page=200

I have no ideal how to resolve this issue. I can't possible 301 an unlimited number of pages, and I can see this being a big SEO problem. Any thoughts?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

I can see the links working in reverse (page=200 links to page=199 via rel="prev" code) but what is the largest number and where did that link come from?

Good news is that Google isn't picking up on those urls so you should be find rankings wise (its a Moz crawler issue) - https://www.google.com/search?q=site:http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-trek-memorabilia%3Fpage%3D&start=0

[Everett]

Hello Spacecollective,

Your shopping cart is throwing Soft 404 errors on paginated URLs that don't exist. These pages need to return a 404 status code in order to be removed from the index and to address this issue. And yes, it can be a big problem.

I did a quick search for "OpenCart soft 404 errors" and here's a forum post that might help you out:

http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=102748

Good luck!

[moon-boots]

Hello Oleg. I noticed by accident. Instead of entering page 2, I entered page 20 and then noticed the problem. I then entered 200, 1000 and so on and found no matter what number I entered a page with no products always showed up.

Thanks for letting me know about Google not picking up on them, that makes me feel a whole lot better!

[moon-boots]

Hello Everett, according to Oleg these pages aren't being indexed, so the resulting soft 404's aren't a problem, correct?

[Everett]

Google may have figured out that they don't want those pages in their index, but the problem still exists and needs to be fixed. The pages show a 200 status code, do not have a robots Noindex tag, and have self-referencing Rel ="canonical" tags. All of these things are problems, but if you just have the system return a 404 status code on those pages that don't list any products you should be fine.

[moon-boots]

What do you mean by ''self-referencing Rel ="canonical" tags''?

[Everett]

It means the page has a Rel="Canonical" tag that tells search engines it is the right page to show in search results -- as opposed to one that says another page should show up instead. You can learn more here.

[moon-boots]

Thank you for the link, but I'm still unsure about these two specific issues.

Issue One:

So I have say the two below links, which are the same category but just page 1 and 2.

Page 1: http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-wars-memorabilia

Page 2: http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-wars-memorabilia/page/2/

Should Page 1 be the Canonical for all subsequent pages, or by their own rights is Page 2 and onward considered their own page? From what I understand of the former this would cause a Duplicate Title problem. The latter however would surely cause problems for Google as it would ignore all of the products on Pages 2 and onward?

Currently I have Rel Canonical and Rel Prev/Next in place, am I correct in thinking this is the correct way to do this?

Issue Two:

One of the below links is the main category (Canonical) while the other is indirect from the Brand option available on our site.

Category: http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-wars-memorabilia

Brand: http://www.interstellarstore.com/star-wars-memorabilia?page=2%2F

Am I correct in thinking that the Canonical URL displayed on the Brand page should in fact be the Category URL above?

I'm sorry for all the questions, I'm just trying to make heads to tails of the issue. Currently there are over 20,000 Duplicate Title issues and I'm thinking this may be the cause.

[Everett]

#1. The way you're handing paginated URLs with products on them is fine, but the problem is when you get to the end of the paginated set and the system continues to make pages even though there are no more products to show. That is the issue I was trying to help you resolve, which is not the same as paginated pages that show products.

#2 Yes, the canonical for the brand pages should be the URL listed above as "Category". Thus both the "Category" URL and the "Brand" URL in your example should list the Category URL as Canonical.

I agree that this is likely the cause of your duplicate title issues.

[moon-boots]

Oh I understand now, thank you!

_**Re #1: **_Would putting Rel Prev on the last page in the set resolve the issue? Or is this a deeper issue within my website code which needs to be resolved by not allowing pages to be created beyond the end of the paginated set?

[Everett]

This is a deeper issue that will probably require the help of a developer, though it shouldn't take them long to fix. Basically, paginated category pages that have ZERO products should return a 404 status code because they really shouldn't exist. The fact that any content appears on those URLs is a bug that needs to be fixed, because they should show "Page Not Found". Also, as you mentioned, the very last page in the set should NOT have a Rel "Next" tag, and there should be no links, (whether href or javascript) to subsequent pages beyond the last one with products on it.

[moon-boots]

Everett, you've been incredibly helpful - thank you!