[Steve Jones]

Hi Steve

Google webmaster tools is listing these urls as 404’s, any idea why and how to prevent it?

9
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=24
404
12/10/13

10
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=23
404
12/10/13

11
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=22
404
12/10/13

12
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=20
404
12/10/13

13
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=19
404
12/10/13

14
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=12
404
12/10/13

15
cities/cardiff/name/tracy-france/?cn-s=&=&cn-cat=21

[Steven Zahm]

@ Steve

Nope, unfortunately never seen this before. I see the dates are only Dec 10th. Is this the only time this occurred or is what you pasted just a sampling? I went to your site. I couldn’t find and entry for tracy-france and it appears that you have both the category select and the search disabled on Slim Plus, so those would not even be an option for the Googlebot to follow.

[Steve Jones]

Hi Steve

It appears Google is seeing a separate page for each entry when a directory is placed on a page e.g.

/erpsoftware/name/abby-griffiths/
/erpsoftware/name/alan-clement/
/erpsoftware/name/craig-such/
/erpsoftware/name/debbie-boden/
/erpsoftware/name/eleanor-walsh/
/erpsoftware/name/emma-bush/
/erpsoftware/name/gemma-webb/
/erpsoftware/name/ian-farrar/
/erpsoftware/name/ian-royall/
/erpsoftware/name/john-palmer/
/erpsoftware/name/karen-halliday/
/erpsoftware/name/kate-thomson/
/erpsoftware/name/liam-mooney/
/erpsoftware/name/mr-greg-hackney/
/erpsoftware/name/neil-st-john/
/erpsoftware/name/nell-mcintosh/
/erpsoftware/name/paola-white/
/erpsoftware/name/patrick-mcgowan/
/erpsoftware/name/steve-power/
/erpsoftware/name/steve-whitehouse/
/erpsoftware/name/symtrax-ltd/
/erpsoftware/name/victoria-park/

Not sure if this is a bad thing for SEO but anyway, why the contact name when they are all set as organisations?

Steve

[Steven Zahm]

@ Steve

No, that’s good thing for SEO.

The only way for those links to exist is if they are actual entries, they will not be created for contact names. If you do not want them followed, you’ll have to set those entries as unlisted.

Hope that helps.

[Steve Jones]

Hi Steve

My point is, as organisations, the organisation name should appear in the page name not the contact name. It would likely match up with the weblink url and help googlebot to understand the page content

Steve

[Steven Zahm]

@ Steve

The organizations name does in the page name. Here’s and example from the cMap demo page:
http://connections-pro.com/demo/template/cmap/name/a-w-goldens-fastrack-complete-car-care-center/

This is an org with a contact name. The org name is used, not the contact name. Actually it is not possible for the contact name to have a “name” URL because they are never created since they are not actual entries within Connections. For those name URL/s you mentioned above, a try must exist for that name. If you do not want Google to crawl those pages or those entries, you’ll have to set those entries as either private or unlisted.

[Steve Jones]

Sorry, I’m confused Steve

Here’s a page link with a contact name in it

http://www.itshowcase.co.uk/erpsoftware/name/abby-griffiths/

The Organisation is ‘Causeway Technologies’

I have attached a screen shot of the associated connections entry for the organisation

I have also attached a screenshot of the html improvements recommended by google webmaster tools, which shows that google sees these pages have the same title tag, which I is set in the page that hosts the directory, in this case http://www.itshowcase.co.uk/erpsoftware/ and is also being used by the individual connections pages for each entry, hence duplicate tags

The same issue applies to duplicate Meta Descriptions

If I set the entries as private or unlisted, surely they won’t show in the directory at all?

Steve

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[Steven Zahm]

@ Steve

Ok, I see…

The only way this could be is if the entry was first created as an individual using the contact name as the entry name then later switching the entry from an individual to an organization moving the name to the contact name.

The only way to change this now is to edit the database directly change the entry slug. Or, create a new org with the duplicate info and then deleting the original.

The next version of Connections, 0.8, prevents the switching from one entry type to another. I did that for other reasons, but this change would have prevented this from happening.

[Steve Jones]

I think these were all created using your import routine Steve

[Steven Zahm]

@ Steve

I suppose if you mapped the first name and the last name in the CSV file to the to the first name and the last name fields instead of the contact first name and contact last name fields in Connections, then the entries would be imported as individuals and not organizations but then there would have been nothing in the contact fields and you would have had to switch the entry type and move the name to the contact name. I’d really would need a copy of the CSV file that was imported and the exacting mapping you used to see if some sort of weird bug exists. What I do know with certainty is that csv fields can not be mapped to multiple different fields in Connections at importing.

Regardless, the fix still applies. There’s no way around that.

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