Best Seller showing on Google Search

[nigelt]

Hi All.
Just checking statcounter this morning and notice this...

Someone had done a google search for "recta pathfinder"
and we came up on google (3rd from top, so sort of pleased !).
Trouble is, this is what google showed....

Best Sellers
RECTA DT100 ORIENTEERING COMPASS. RECTA DT100 ORIENTEERING COMPASS. £8.95. find out more. RECTA DT120 PATHFINDER COMPASS. RECTA DT120 PATHFINDER COMPASS ...

Clicking on best sellers, took them to our main site page.
Couldnt see any other references to our site at all.

Would have thought it would point to the actual product,
We've got one product per section set up (which apparently google likes !)

Any thoughts ?
I'm using the Smart theme... not sure if that would make any difference at all.
Thanks
Nige

[NormanRouxel]

This is Google indexing your home page and finding that content there. The rest of your navigation goes via cgi-bin scripts and Google may not be able to follow these links, thus no more of your site is being indexed.

It may be agood idea to include the Site Map on your site (Settings / Site Options / Links / Appearance Settings) and have a hard coded link to that on your home page. That way there's something for spiders to follow.

[nigelt]

Thanks Norman.
I've just checked the site settings and the include site map navigation icon setting is TRUE.
... Cant see one on the page though !...Its Smart design i'm using.
If I change to something like technical design, then i can see a sitemap icon.

Time to change designs ?

Nige

[plantsforshade]

Hi

We had the same problem, the sitemap just didn't work. We ended up adding the code to have a sitemap icon in the search bar at the top of the page which worked well. We got the info how to do it from the AUG, but if I can understand it anyone can. We have found google come every night as before to our site but goes much deeper as a result of the change and even though we have mostly multi product pages and have a page rank of 0 on these product pages we come up well in the searches.


Regards

Nigel

www.plantsforshade.co.uk

[nigelt]

Thanks for that Nigel.
I'll have a look at the AUG.
Might just stick with Contemporary design though.. assuming THAT works properly !
Its got a site map icon already in situ.

Cheers
Nige

[pinbrook]

its not necessary to change designs.

A link to sitemap is a simple thing to get right in any design.

Additionally you should submit an XML sitemap to Google then you don't have to worry about google finding the link to HTML siremap

[brian.mc]

Thanks for that Nigel.
I'll have a look at the AUG.
Might just stick with Contemporary design though.. assuming THAT works properly !
Its got a site map icon already in situ.

Cheers
Nige

We use Contemporary and it works fine for us.

[Duncan Rounding]

It is very simple to add another text link to the sitemap in the horizontal navbar. The sitemap only appears with the Smart theme when the catalog hopme page is used as the homepage - which is not often the case.

Backup. Go to the design layout for the Catalog pages and find the 'Horizontal Nav Bar Text Links' layout. In the code pane you will see a reference to 'Sitemap Text Link' - simple remove the blockif and /block immediately around the 'Sitemap Text Link' (leave the other blockif and /block around it). Now copy the code including the remaining blockif and /block around the 'Sitemap Text Link' and paste it into a similar position on the Brochure layout 'Brochure Nav Bar Text Link List' layout code, at the end of the code, or where you want it to appear.

[Mike Hughes]

Re the original post. This has been discussed before and google will present what it considers the most relevant page in its results. Most of the time as far as Google is concerned, the home page is far more important than a sub page which could be several clicks away. This in no way is a problem as the home page result will be appearing further up the serps than the dedicated 'one product per page' result (you can usually check this by continuing down through the the results pages until the you find the other page. They should both be there somewhere).

Mike

[nigelt]

It is very simple to add another text link to the sitemap in the horizontal navbar. The sitemap only appears with the Smart theme when the catalog hopme page is used as the homepage - which is not often the case.

.
Ha ! Simple for you maybe :-)

All done thanks very much. As usual your instructions are faultless.

But the real question is "How do YOU know that" ?
Is it written somewhere or is it a case of using actinic so much that you almost know the ins and outs ?

I've got a horrible feeling its the latter !

Thanks very much for you help.
Much appreciated.
Nige

[Duncan Rounding]

Experience mostly, you just need to dig into the design a lot. But beware it can lead to hair loss.

[RuralWeb]

But the real question is "How do YOU know that

You will find that most simple questions such as this have already been answered before so can be found in a search. Also Google will turn up lots of ideas that can plug stright into actinic