We clearly disagree on how & why Google penalizes SEO redirecting.

Firstly, it is our understanding that google's stance is that they "prefer" no redirects. However, they only penalize in the case of javascript redirects of pretty urls. Which we are not doing. So, from our research and knowledge on the matter, there is no SEO penalty to be concerned with that we are aware of.

Secondly, I would like to add we are not extracting any parameters. (what google has explicitly cautioned against) we are adding parameters. This is oposite to that of Google's stated concern on traceable url params. They penalize based on paramaters and their bot design being such that they are now tracking dynamic urls and their contained params, and know when you are being "sneeky". We are not. We are providing the oposite - a clean URL that redirects to a param'd url.

Why do we do this? Linking. That's all. We want users to link to tags, and be able to do so by just simply referencing a simple mechanism of /blogsearch/tag or /blogsearch/category/cat . It's cleaner in code, nicer to look at...ect.

It is our intent to migrate the BlogSearch page to a full scale tag/category reverse lookup search page. (keep in mind there is no static table data for tags/categories, they are indexed matched tables spread out via C5's attributes system) So we didn't want to "jump" right to that, and felt as a transition stage, everyone was already used to utilizing C5's search block, that this made sense for now. Keep in mind also that every thing we implement effects thousands of users. We can't just "jump" so to speak. So we wanted to Introduce the blogsearch page, get people normalized to using our provided code, and then add in a singlepage design where the pretty url's "stick" if you have that page set as your blog search destination in your ProBlog Settings area.

Last thing I wanted to point out here is that Concrete5 currently has no URL system for attributes. Which is what we are talking about regarding tags and categories, and why no one has provided a reasonable solution yet.

Having said all that, I do recognize both your concern and the need for a reverse look-up attribute search block for Concrete5, and do hope to add that to ProBlog early this year, and then also as a separate product offering.

Thanks for expressing your desire to see a better product. Let us know if there is something we can help you with.

ChadStrat

Thanks for the quick response.

Basically our client has been sent a report from an SEO agency that is telling them there are these "issues" and are asking us to fix them.

Example:
http://www.pacificwestretail.com.au/news/...
http://www.pacificwestretail.com.au/news/?ccm_paging_p_b797=2...

This is a duplicate title/description tag issue. The pages have different content, and are acually different pages. Hence the issue

I have added a " | Page 2", etc to the tags.

I've been looking into a solution for the category, archive, tags menus also. Looking at how Wordpress works for this should work something as as such.

/blog/category/category-name/
Title: Category Name | Site Name
Description: Custom Category Name Description

that link you are referencing though is Concrete5 pagination. not tags or categories? unless I'm looking at that wrong? That's definitely not something we can fix. That's just how pagination works. And the pages will be different content. Page on is 1-10 results, and page 2 is 11-20....ect.

ChadStrat

Yes, and I managed to add a fix for the concrete5 pagination.

The categories, tags, etc. Little trickier.

http://www.pacificwestretail.com.au/news/...

http://www.pacificwestretail.com.au/news/search/?akID[42][atSelectO...

Duplicate Title/Desc as

http://www.pacificwestretail.com.au/news/search/?akID[42][atSelectO...

Ok, I can't fix everything about C5's search engine...but I did a quick rewrite of the /blogsearch page.

please update to v8.1.2.0 and give a quick test:

- if /blogsearch is set as your search path in your problog settings dashboard page, the search will no longer re-rout.
- will set the meta's, or reset them if no clean url is passed
- will redirect as before if /blogsearch is not the PB search page
- will set $_REQUEST for search block for akID's bypassing ugly URL akID[] array

Hope this helps. Please leave a product review. Very appreciated.

ChadStrat

Cool. I'll run the update tomorrow and let you know how things go.

PS. The hack to fix the duplicate page title/desc on the blog list paging is to edit the elements/header_required.php. Title section example below,note of course need to use the relevant "ccm_paging_p_" variable.

if($_GET['ccm_paging_p_b797'] && $_GET['ccm_paging_p_b797']>=1){
$seo_page = "Page ".$_GET['ccm_paging_p_b797'];
}

if ($akt) {
$pageTitle = $akt;
?><title><?php echo htmlspecialchars($akt, ENT_COMPAT, APP_CHARSET);
if($seo_page){
echo " | $seo_page";
}

?></title>
<?php } else {
$pageTitle = htmlspecialchars($pageTitle, ENT_COMPAT, APP_CHARSET);
?><title><?php echo sprintf(PAGE_TITLE_FORMAT, SITE, $pageTitle);
if($seo_page){
echo " | $seo_page";
}?></title>

Ran the update and didn't seem to work.

I unset the current search page, at which point the category/tag/archive links just go to the site homepage.

Set the search path to /blogsearch . That should be it. Make sure you clear cache.

Also notcied an "Edit this post" link appeared on the blog content page even when nobody is logged in

That's not a ProBlog issue that I can tell.

here is the code...it clearly is using C5's API to check if the user is logged in?

I just went and looked at your site...no "edit this post" is shown.

Again...clear your cache. In fact...when editing, just turn it off all together.

ChadStrat

Cleared cache and fixed the edit post link issue. Rather odd.

Set /blogsearch and now just returning "no results found"

I have left it as is so you can check, but will need to revert back soon before I start getting angry calls from client

you'll want to go to the /blogsearch page, put it in edit mode and make sure the block is set to search in the correct area.

ChadStrat

Ah yes, works now. Awesome! Will fix up the design of that page and this will keep the client off my back!

I have so many installs of Problog now so great to see it developing further!!

not a problem. Make sure you take 2min and go leave product feedback. That's what keeps us developing.

Thanks!

ChadStrat