Serious Yahoo Indexing problem

[Steve Indigo]

Hi Group,

I need a bit of advice.
When I was playing with the seach engines to see where I was coming in the listings, I went to yahoo.com and searched the whole web (not just in the UK)
for Horny goat weed tincture. I was very please my site at No.3.

However, the address looked a biit odd. I followed the link and got a access denied message.

The address yahoo had indexed is
http://www.indigo-herbs.co.uk/cgi-bi...F=91&NOLOGIN=1
when the real address is
http://www.indigo-herbs.co.uk/acatalog/Epimedium.html

I phone tech support (cover) at actinic and They did not really know why this is happening, they only told me to always do a refresh and not just a update for major site changes, well I sort of already knew this.

Can you guys help me?

If this is happening once it may well be happening lots of times with lots of random searches which I should be recieving visits and sales.

I have no idea how long this has been happening and have no idea how much bussiness I have lost, through this error.

I need to find our why this is happening and what I can do pervent it happening in the future.

I am in your hands.

many thanks
Steve
www.indigo-herbs.co.uk

[Duncan Rounding]

Did you change your product reference since Yahoo indexed your site?
The link you posted has a prod ref of 91 whereas on your site there is no product of that reference number on that section page.

[leehack]

Have a look into placing a robots.txt file which restricts SE's from spidering anything cgi-bin related, AS LONG as you don't have cgi-bin section links. If you search the forum on 'robots.txt' or something like that, you should find a post from a few months ago, detailing a new method on the robots.txt file (add sitemap link) and also how to stop SE's getting to things you don't want them to such as the cgi-bin.

[Steve Indigo]

Did you change your product reference since Yahoo indexed your site?
The link you posted has a prod ref of 91 whereas on your site there is no product of that reference number on that section page.

I dont think we have changed anything to do with this, good selling product, for a long time, since the early spring at least.

What is this prod ref all about?

Steve
www.indigo-herbs.co.uk

[peblaco]

It's part of the link
The PRODREF=91 is the bit that says find your product with reference number 91. If it cannot then it returns an error.

[Steve Indigo]

Have a look into placing a robots.txt file which restricts SE's from spidering anything cgi-bin related, AS LONG as you don't have cgi-bin section links. If you search the forum on 'robots.txt' or something like that, you should find a post from a few months ago, detailing a new method on the robots.txt file (add sitemap link) and also how to stop SE's getting to things you don't want them to such as the cgi-bin.

Thanks for that that an intresting idea. I will have look in to it. I have no idea at this time how to do this.

cheers
steve
www.indigo-herbs.co.uk

[Steve Indigo]

It's part of the link
http://www.indigo-herbs.co.uk/cgi-bi...F=91&NOLOGIN=1

The PRODREF=91 is the bit that says find your product with reference number 91. If it cannot then it returns an error.

Hmmm......OK

Where within actnic can I find this infomation?

Steve
www.indigo-herbs.co.uk

[Mike Hughes]

It looks to me as if that items product reference is now 90 instead of 91. I'm not sure why that should have changed as once it's assigned it should have stayed fixed.

Mike

[Steve Indigo]

It looks to me as if that items product reference is now 90 instead of 91. I'm not sure why that should have changed as once it's assigned it should have stayed fixed.

Mike

Yes your quite right
This product ref. is now 90

Do you or anyone else have experiance of this sort of seach engine indexing getting mixed up with the cgi-bin, happening before?

Steve

[Duncan Rounding]

I wouldn't be overly concerned about this as long as it's not continuing and that you don't have lots of instances of this. You can check the cache date on Yahoo and see when it was last indexed. As it is correct on your site now then it should get updated in a while. You could also set up an htaccess redirect for that page in the interim if you wanted.

Make sure you have a sitemap link on all your pages, submit xml sitemaps to the SEs, and search for info on how to block cgi-links from the robots if you wish. It is quite common that new products or best seller lists (the cgi links) are indexed, sometimes in preference to the actual page.

[RuralWeb]

This product ref. is now 90

There is a bug in early versions of V8 which changes the product reference - check you have the latest version of V8. There are several posts about cgi indexing of best sellers etc.