Kryptronic Software Support Forum

This is what I've been using:

$canonical = $this->globals('core.requesturi');
$canonical = preg_replace('/^' . preg_quote($this->globals('core.url_nonssl'),'/') . '/','',$canonical);
$canonical = preg_replace('/^' . preg_quote($this->globals('core.url_ssl'),'/') . '/','',$canonical);
$canonical = preg_replace('/\&amp\;/','&',$canonical);
$canonical = strip_tags($canonical);

if ($canonical == '/index.php') {

     $canonical = $this->link_namespace($this->globals('core.defaultapp'),$this->globals('core.defaultns'));
     $canonical = preg_replace('/^' . preg_quote($this->globals('core.url_nonssl'),'/') . '/','',$canonical);
     $canonical = preg_replace('/^' . preg_quote($this->globals('core.url_ssl'),'/') . '/','',$canonical);
     $canonical = preg_replace('/\&amp\;/','&',$canonical);

} // End of if statement.

print '<link rel="canonical" href="' . $this->xhtml_encode($canonical) . '" />' . $eol;

It works fine on kryptronic.com.  Added to {private}/core/CORE/includes/jslib.php.

This issue regarding canonical URL's definitely needs sorting out. When reading the various posts on the subject nothing seems to be definitive and Google virutally demands there is no ambiguity on the matter.

Thanks. We are using the new analytics code so can I assume that the change above is compatible?

This new code appears to deal with "sorted" page variants but there is a problem with long lists (like AllItems) that extend over a series of pages. The same canonical link appears on every page in the series even though the content is different.

I also noticed that the first page uses the seo url but subsequent pages revert to a non-seo format like index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodall&ref=&count=60&offset=60.

Is there a way that the software can be made to produce seo urls on all pages in a series and add a number to the end (as is done for the page title) so that Google and users can see the page being viewed is part of a series e.g.

AllItems-page1
AllItems-page2, etc

The canonical link can then reflect this page numbering.

The article I mentioned earlier about paginated content also offers another solution using rel="next" and rel="prev" in the head:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/an … ic=4617741

Could that be generated?

In response to your comment about using the full url, Google state in the other article:
Avoid errors: use absolute paths rather than relative paths with the rel="canonical" link element.
Use this structure:  http://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendresss.html
Not this structure: /dresses/green/greendress.html)

Last edited by sdn (07-13-2014 04:31:23)

webmaster wrote:

The software could be made to handle the paginated results, but that would require serious SEO work either in the CORE_App class, or in the .htaccess file.  I'd recommend getting a custom shop quote on that.

Im disappointed by this response as Google has been strongly emphasising for several years the importance of canonical url's. Spokesman MC's statements on the subject for the past two years have been quite clear about it and leave little room for doubt that a dim view is taken on incorrectly setup canonicals and for the software not to support them correctly is abysmal,

Im sorry Nick but your stat in another thread that canonicals are becoming popular with some people and you would probably support them at some point in the future is way short of what Ive come to expect from CCP

Accurate canonical links seem to be a baseline requirement of any self-respecting shopping cart these days as intimated in your sales literature:

"Advanced Turbo-Charged Search Engine Optimization
Every building block of our ecommerce software has been thoroughly designed to give you the best possible chance of being noticed and also rising in the search engines. Every product, category and page can be individually optimized as well as your overall site."

If I had total control over the urls (as I did with our old hand coded html site that ranked extremely well but looked like a dog and became impossible to maintain) I would use SEO urls on each page in the series as outlined above (e.g. AllItems-page1, etc) with matching canonical links and rel="next" and rel="prev" in the head.

If the page was sorted it could revert to the index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodall&ref=&count=60&offset=60 parameter format as now but retain the same canonical data “AllItems-page1”. That way Google understand what is going on from the parameter data. How would that create duplicate content issues.

I do not claim to be an SEO expert but I do know what worked very well for us for over 15 years with our hard coded html site. The SEO performance of our CCP site is less than half as good so there is still a long way to go before it becomes turbo charged from our perspective.

Last edited by sdn (07-15-2014 07:54:58)

I appreciated that the new coding is a considerable improvement over the previous one. We will await the new version/update(?). Is there any indication of a release date for this?

In the meantime, where are the hyperlinks generated for the 2nd, 3rd, etc. pages that appear in the defaultlink div on a page?

It looks like the canonical metatag code did not make it into the 8.0.8 release so I would like to put it in myself.

The 8.0.8 jslib.php code appears to have changed a bit so not sure if the mod in the post above (07-11-2014 16:21:52) is still OK to use. Please can you confirm?

Did anything get released to optimise pagination?