#5595 – 404s with "table/" in URL

Hi

Any idea where these "table/" URL 404s come from?

They are a link to a list category view. They are used to distinguish them from blog category views.
In sh404SEF, if you have a category called "sample", then links are as follow:

- link to blog view is /sample
- link to list view is /table/sample

However, now one of these "table/" 404s has turned up in google's Search console.

You mean they are listed as 404 or as a regular URL?

If 404 then that's fine, Google stumbled upon one of those bad links some where and tested it.
If as a regular URL, then it means you have a link to such a category on your site, somewhere and it's not a 404 anymore. If so, you should see that URL in the SEF URL manager.

If those URLs are 404, then there's not really anything to do about them, they don't matter.

Should I try to re-direct them to the best fitting article, any other redirect code or should I just let them be?

You should redirect 404 when the 404 is caused by a change you made to your site, for instance you modified a URL or such. You should not redirect when you removed or unpublished and article for instance. A 404 is suitable in such case.
If that /table/xxx URL does not exist on your site, it should trigger a 404. That 404 1appearing in GSC is not the sign of an issue.

Best regards

Hi

If they are 404s then all is fine.

Should I set "Insert content table name" to "No" (I think it was "Yes" by default)?

But if I understand the help text correct, since it is "Yes" it should be visible in the URL, right?! Why is it not?

You should do absolutely nothing. You do not have a problem. You can only break things if you start changing URLs structure parameters now.


Best regards

Hi

You can look at the details of the 404 reports (both in sh404SEF and in the search console) which may shed some light on where that link is coming from. And in GSC you can also said the 404 was "fixed". If this was some random link that happened some times ago and was fixed since then, it won't come back.

Best regards

Hi

but that sh404sef in some way has gotten "disturbed" by it or the "Intro image"

There is no confusion and nothing out of the extraordinary here. I provided you with the full explanation above/ sh404SEF is pretty dumb when it comes to URLs:

- it never, ever create an URL. It cannot do that. This is technically impossible.
- Joomla and your extensions creates URLs (in non-SEF form)
- then Joomla and your extensions ask sh404SEF to convert them to SEF.
- if joomla creates a link to a blog category view, the link will be: /category-title
- if Joomla creates a link to a list category view, the link will be: /table/category-title

If you have links with /table/ in them then it means that Joomla or some extension on your site created a link to a list view for that category. sh404SEF is not involved in the creation process. Note also that that link would have been created also without sh404SEF.

The "table"-URLs show the first image twice which makes me suspect that this is related to my work improving the structured data with the tool https://www.tassos.gr/joomla-extensions/google-structured-data-markup. In order to get that to work I had to define an "Intro image" for each article since this tool doesn't choose the first picture in the article as sh404sef does.



I doubt that the new tool has created these new "table"-ULRs but that sh404sef in some way has gotten "disturbed" by it or the "Intro image". Based on this, do you have any suggestions on how to solve this, get rid of the creation of these "table"-URLs?

I do not know which links that extension create.

I would suggest that you search the SEF URL manager for those 2 URLs:

https://www.xxxx.com/restoration/steering/steering.html and https://www.xxxx.com/table/restoration/steering/

and see which non-sef URLs are associated with them. This may provide a hint as to which extension or Joomla page is creating those links.

Lastly, all of the above assumes that you did not make any change to the URL settings in sh404SEF, the ones under "Extensions" -> "Joomla". If you did then please state exactly what you changed as this would have a direct impact on all those links.

Best regards

Hi

I haven't changed any URL settings in sh404sef (settings below). If I interpret one of your previous comments earlier, I shouldn't change "Insert content table name: Yes" to ":No" and/or change "Default table views name: "Table"" to e.g. [blank], but try to find what is causing these new URL-requests?!

Yes.

If you can't, or can't without unreasonable efforts, you can also set a canonical link on those "table" URls to the original, desired URL - there's a canonical field available when you click on a URL record; This will make sure Google and other search engines won't consider this URL anymore but group it with the "main" URL.

I have now two URLs pointing towards the same article. Can/should I move these "table" URLs in URL manager, or make rewrites, to the "correct" articles? Or can I use the "Canonical url" field? (besides finding the reason why they turn up)

Canonical is by far the fastest, easiest and most reliable way.

Blog category is the same as Article?!

Not at all. One shows the full list of articles in a given or group of categories. The other just show a single article.
A blog category view will list all articles in the category by showing only the first part of an article and then adding a "Read more" link. That's a typical layout for a blog, hence the name.

From the links I can see, you should not be using category links but instead simple article links.

I think what's happening for you is the following:

- you link to a blog category view
- there's only one article in that category
- you have not inserted a "Read more" tag in that article so Joomla displays the entire article, without a Read more button

Because of the above (1 article in category and no read more button inserted), you think you are looking at an article but you are actually looking at a category.

If this is correct, best would be to delete those links and redo them as links to single articles.

Best regards

Hi

I'm on the other hand not sure you have understood my site correctly.

I have not understood or not. You asked if Blog view was the same as Article and I replied to that. I had no information on the menu items you created or links found on your site.

I thought I had -articles-.

restoration/steering/steering.html is for an article:

index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=199&id=55&lang=en&view=article

However table/restoration/steering/ is definitely a category page.

index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=101&id=33&lang=en&view=category

On the other hand I've never understood how and where to define that.

When you create a menu item, you have plenty of options when you select the menu type, including articles, various types of categories, etc

I don't really understand what changes you would recommend me to do with your comment "delete those links and redo them as links to single articles".

I fyou already only created menu items going to "Single article" then of course this does not apply. I made the hypothesis that you were using "Category blog" menu items instead of "Single article" juste because you asked whether "article" and "blog category" were the same or not.

All menus items are related to "Single article", not categories or likewise.

Those are just your menu links, created by you. There can be other links that were created by Joomla, modules, extensions, search, rss feeds.

If you found "table/restoration/steering/" in the URL manager then it means that Joomla or an extension at some point asked sh404SEF to create the SEF equivalent of index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=101&id=33&lang=en&view=category
If Google found it, it means that Joomla or that extension included that link in a publicly available page that Google found, crawled and indexed.

Would that prevent the "table" URLs to be requested?

Nothing inside of sh404SEF. I hope your understand by now that sh404SEF has nothing to do with this. That link is available somewhere on your site. Created by Joomla or an extension. It is made available whether you have sh404SEF installed on your site or NOT.
The only difference with sh404SEF is that you can see it because sh404SEF lists all the URLs on your site in the SEF URL manager.

Best regards

Hi

Making a search on "Steering" also gave links to the category "steering", starting with "table".

Ah yes, the Search results will link to the category but they link to a List view of the category.

I can however still access the URL https://www.xxxx.com/table/restoration/steering/. Until I see any reason for using those I will prevent them with a 410 rewrite.

Or you can redirect to the category itself using an alias in sh404SEF?

ie:

from: /table/{*}
to: /{*}

That's probably better than a 410.

I start to believe it's robots who in some way have built these URL requests. Why those links suddenly appeared, after 3 years with Joomla, I won't research....

That's absolutely possible. You could search your web server logs for requests to /search and see if any of those requests are from GoogleBot or any variation of their bot.

Best regards

Hi

Where I have several articles belonging to one category

Not sure I follow: /table/xxx is always going to be a URL for a category, a category list view. So redirecting the list view to the blog view makes sense. Not sure what articles have to do with that?

Looking again at restoration/steering/steering.html and table/restoration/steering/ there is no risk of confusion. The rule above will redirect

table/restoration/steering/

to

restoration/steering/

The articles have a different pattern (they have .html at the end) and won't interfere or be interfered with.

Best regards

Hi

Articles collected on blog category views with "Read more" is hence not in scope for the site. Right now. Therefore I run into this problems with 1-to-many categories, e.g. table/restoration/Engine/ which contains several articles, like "engine", "carburetor", "oil pump" etc.

I think I understand what you mean however the category URL (ie with or without /table, list view or blog view) has no bearing on the article URL nor on the category content.

So if the category Restoration -> Engine contains several articles (engine, carburetor, oil pump) those articles will be listed exactly the same in the "List view" (with /table) or in the "Blog view) (without /table) and the article URLs will always be the same.

The part of the site I am developing now, is built around single articles and due to different reasons I want the site to show them as just that, now and most probably in the future as well.

Then indeed just use links to articles. The fact that you also have links to categories, whether created directly by you or found by search engines doing a search or in any other way does not matter at all.

The site is not large enough so that would cause any kind of issue really.

Good luck with the rest of the work!

Best regards

i

You're welcome! Closing this ticket now, feel free to open a new one as needed. If you do so, please mention this ticket number in the new one.

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Best regards