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#815 – HTML Improvements - unable to find URLs

Posted in ‘sh404SEF’

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Wednesday, 05 August 2015 14:51 UTC

tomaszciti

Hi

I'm going though HTML Improvements advised by our Google Search Console (Webmasters account) for our domain which is "xxxx.com"

1. Where do I find duplicates of "Home Page" URLs as one of "problematic" URLs listed by Search Console:

/?hc_location=ufi‎

redirects to Home Page? I have tried to locate the above URL in "URL Manager" without success.
I just want to delete the above URL as it has "Non-informative title tag". It has been generated by SH404SEF, it wasn't created manually.

2. "Missing title tags"

Google states that the below URL:

‎/index.php?option=com_sh404sef&view=channelurl&format=raw&langtag=en_GB‎

has a missing title tag. Unfortunately I'm not able to find this URL in URL Manager. It's not one of the aliases I have set up.

Thank you

Kind Regards,

Tomasz

Wednesday, 05 August 2015 14:57 UTC

wb_weeblr

Hi

1 - This URL was not created by sh404SEF, it's a link to home (which is what URL recognize) to which an extension has added the query variable (not part of the SEF URL itself) "hc_location=ufi".
(sh404SEF NEVER create any URL. It only translate them from non-sef to SEF, based on what the extensions SEF URL plugin tells it to do).

If you can't find the extension causing this, a good solution is to add a canonical tag to the home page, which is exactly why this feature was added.

2 - That's a non-sef URL that was used some times ago by the Facebook API. It's been removed from sh404SEF when Facebook stopped using it, some months back. Aer you running an up to date version of sh404SEF?

Be aware that even if you do, and this URL doesn't exist anymore on your site, the Search console will not update their data before a long, long while.

Rgds

Wednesday, 05 August 2015 15:15 UTC

tomaszciti

Hi

Thanks for quick reply.

1. Hmm...I have never used canonical tags before and don't want to ruin our SEO...

Shall I just add under "Home Page Meta"

/?hc_location=ufi‎

as "Canonical URL"?

I have tested this on our dev server and if I do the above:

1. The Home Page has in /head/ section the below:

<link href="http://cc.lan/?hc_location=ufi‎" rel="canonical" />

2. The //?hc_location=ufi‎ URL has in /head/ section:

<link href="http://cc.lan/" rel="canonical" />

Which makes me confused a bit...

Thanks.

Wednesday, 05 August 2015 15:22 UTC

wb_weeblr

Hi

No, that's the opposite. You don't care about the ?hc_location=ufi part.

You should use "/" as the canonical for the homepage.
This will cause:

to be added in all variations of the home page, such as http://cc.lan/?hc_location=ufi‎ or any other query variable.

This tells search engines that despite that page being accessible under several URLs, the only one that matter is the "canonical" one, hence the name of the tag, which you set to http://cc.lan/.

I think you would benefit from reading the canonical tag page of documentation.
Rgds

Wednesday, 05 August 2015 15:54 UTC

tomaszciti

Hi

Thanks again for speedy reply.

I knew something looked wrong that's why I asked.

Thanks for clearing up - I understand now. Will read the guide too.

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