google sees files that aren't there

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sorry about the title of this post but i don't know how else to say it. my google seo rating is terrible because google has multiple complaints about meta tags of files that:
don't exist (deleted)
or show up as two pages, one with a url ending with a slash and another (same page) that ends without a slash
or, in the case of the index page shows up with the site title and also with the trailing /index etc. despite using pretty urls.

i have combed the forums without success. all i want to do is go to a folder where i can clean out the evidence of old files, and make the url endings consistent. i have tried this in the attributes section, paths and urls, etc. i have also dumped a nice drop-down menu set up because the double urls seem to all be child pages. now they are all parent pages but the problem persists. i read another post about the problem possibly being with apache servers not liking -'s to separate words in the url.

anyway, i am primarily a designer. i can't write javascript or php from the ground up but i follow instructions well, so if you have any advice, please be specific. code snippets do me no good when not in context.

i'd like to clear these issues up so that i can confidently recommend C5 to future clients. right now, no can do.

thanks in advance for any help.

 
Tony replied on at Permalink Reply
Tony
one solution is to set up a canonical tag in the header:
http://concrete5packages.com/concrete5_blog/canoncial-urls/...
gaga60 replied on at Permalink Reply
hi tony -

thanks for your reply. i have tried the canonical url as you suggested. no results on the google side. was i supposed to do any "personalization" to the code found in the link you gave me?

i pasted it into the themes>mytheme>elements>header.php file. as follows:

<? $cPath = $c->getCollectionPath(); 
$canonicalURL = BASE_URL; 
$canonicalURL.= $cPath; 
$pageIndentifierVars = array('keywords','fID','tag','productID'); 
$canonicalVars = array(); 
foreach($pageIndentifierVars as $var) 
if($_REQUEST[$var]) $canonicalVars[]= $var.'='.$_REQUEST[$var]; 
if( count($canonicalVars) ) $canonicalURL.= '?' . join(',',$canonicalVars); 
btw: my site is apicellaweb.com
thanks,
ga
?>
<link rel="canonical" href="<?= $canonicalURL ?>" />
Tony replied on at Permalink Reply
Tony
it looks like you have this set up correctly, but changes like this take a long time to propagate. google's robots will have to reindex your site, and I'm not sure if those old pages will disappear from their index as soon as that happens. have you signed up for google's webmaster tools? that might give you some more clues as to what's happening with their indexing.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en...
gaga60 replied on at Permalink Reply
tony -

thanks for the reply. i had a feeling that maybe i was expecting too much
from the google refresh. i'll be more patient.

i do work with the webmaster tools and they have been helpful.

thanks again, i'll let you know how things work out.

greg apicella




On 6/10/11 2:36 PM, "Concrete5 Community" <discussions@concretecms.com>
wrote:
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
Did you perhaps Let google spider your site before you turned pretty URLs on? That's the only way Incan imagine this happening

Best wishes
Pecked out on an iPhone