Since we went live with our CS-Cart a week ago, it has had a massive impact on our google ranking.
We’ve added the sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, listed products on Google Base.
Although the crawl errors are showing that they are looking for the wrong links, but hopefully amending the robot.txt file has helped.
Is there anything else that can be done and how long does it take for google to repopulate the links correctly?
Assuming that you moved from another cart, you probably didn’t redirect your old URLS to your new URLS… Google thinks all your old pages are gone, and your new pages don’t have any backlinks to it yet. Hence the drop.
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?p=78373#post78373[/url]
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=16275&highlight=google+redirect[/url]
[url]http://blog.ineedhits.com/search-news/how-to-keep-your-google-ranking-during-a-website-redesign-04379317.html[/url]
I’m really struggling to get my head around this.
Do we have write the code for each products/catagory?
This is an old link:
[url]http://mydomain.com/catalog/2011_Unicorn_Range-2-1.html[/url]
This is the new link:
[url]http://mydomain.com/2011-unicorn-range.html[/url]
How would you write a 301 redirect for this?
if you make category named “catalog”, make products belong to this category and make proper settings in seo addon you would not need to make any redirects…
[quote name=‘Darius’]if you make category named “catalog”, make products belong to this category and make proper settings in seo addon you would not need to make any redirects…[/QUOTE]
Could you explain a little more Darius
admin.php?dispatch=categories.manage
make category named “catalog”, set products Main category “catalog”.
goto
admin.php?dispatch=addons.manage
open “SEO (requires URL manipulation engine - mod_rewrite or isapi_rewrite)”
change “Product/page SEF URL format:” from product_name.html to category_name/product_name.html
Also in htaccess file I am sure it is possible to make global 301 redirect of all content from /catalog/ to /
The SEO add-on is set as you described.
It’s the htaccess file part that i’m really struggling with.
What do you write?
currently got nothing to redirect, many samples available in google like such
[QUOTE]RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^catalog/(.*)$ /$1[/QUOTE]
hope this works, not expert here…
The method Darius explained should work without any modification to .htaccess
If you do not want the category in the new links then try resetting the SEO addon to product only and use a rewrite rule similar to this for each old category
rewriteRule ^catalog/(.*)$ http://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
There are many ways to wildcard rewrites and you should do a little Googling if that above doesn’t work correctly
EDIT: Darius answered while I was still thinking 
best thing i can suggest to understand is do a search for madhouse darts in google, forget the first result, but the next three are old links and head to a 404.
It’s this type of link the I believe needs a 301 redirect, but i just don’t know where to start.
I have googled 301 redirects, but it may aswell be written in Russian! 
only a few non working links are showing for me and they have either catalog or products categories in the links
Adding these 2 rules to your .htaccess should rewrite those if the product names are the same
rewriteRule ^catalog/(.)$ http://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
rewriteRule ^products/(.)$ http://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
this is what is written in the .htaccess file
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
RewriteEngine on
Some hostings require RewriteBase to be uncommented
Example:
Your store url is [url]http://www.yourcompany.com/store/cart[/url]
So “RewriteBase” should be:
RewriteBase /store/cart
#RewriteBase /~mainhost
RewriteBase /
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !.(png|gif|ico|swf|jpe?g|js|css)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php?sef_rewrite=1 [L,QSA]
Where would you add those lines, Thanks
Since you know mod_rewrite is installed they can be added to the bottom of the file without a container
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
RewriteEngine on
Some hostings require RewriteBase to be uncommented
Example:
Your store url is [url]http://www.yourcompany.com/store/cart[/url]
So “RewriteBase” should be:
RewriteBase /store/cart
#RewriteBase /~mainhost
RewriteBase /
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !.(png|gif|ico|swf|jpe?g|js|css)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php?sef_rewrite=1 [L,QSA]
rewriteRule ^catalog/(.)$ http://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
rewriteRule ^products/(.)$ http://www.madhousedarts.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
Like so?
BTW yourcompany.com should be our domain, correct?
Lines starting with # are disabled and ignored
Is there a reason why this line was disabled?
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !.(png|gif|ico|swf|jpe?g|js|css)$
No idea why??
Should it be changed and is the mods you suggested in the correct place?
I asked because that line is not disabled by default but someone did for some reason.
Yes the new redirects are fine like that.
is there any merit in enabling it?
Tried the script and it didn’t work 
Not sure why you’re messing with rewrite rules at all.
If you ported your store over correctly, you would not have any of these issues.
From your initial example, you simply need to:
Put your products in the parent category named ‘catalog’ (per Darius’ initial instructions)
Change the SEO name for your category from 2011-unicom-range to 2011_Unicorn_Range-2-1 in the addons tab of your product details page.
Note that by default, when SEO names are created, they are created from the Product Name and spaces are turned into ‘-’ characters. So you will need to manually adjust this every time you add a new product. Or, if you’re doing an import, ensure that you change ‘-’ to ‘_’ to match your old site.
But do note, that the new SEO name is a much better name then your old one.