Im getting this at the end of my domain URL :
my domain.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=d3a5fe194be2fb377b2b7be82961c093;wwwRedirect
I was hoping for just : my domain. com
Is it something I'm doing wrong or setup on my host wrong? I do have SEO friendly URL's ticked. When clicking on a forum inside the main forum. the URL's show up correctly, this only happens on the main page.
My other 2 Elk forum URL's display correctly and there on the same host. So it must be something I've done on this one forum.
Thats the PHP session being injected for guests.
I too had the same problem and i blocked phpsessid in robots.txt to display only normal url
Oh, OK. I wonder why my other 2 Elk forums don't do that, and, what would I need to add to the robots.txt? Thanks ...
Which one is the youngest forum?
@elk_is_cool This was the code suggested to me
User-agent:
Disallow: *PHPSESSID
Interesting you ask. That would be the one that is doing this. (coffeeforum. xyz)
@Jason ...thank you. Will wait and see what Emanuele says, then will try that.
ElkArte already gives google all the info it needs to avoid this (i.e. a canonical URL). Google, though, takes a bit to digest that, usually in few... weeks? Months? I'm not sure, but sooner rather than later will start considering what the script tells it to do and will discard the URLs with the session ID.
Honestly, setting up a robot.txt will not really help indexing IMO, because the session is sent out anyway, and google will just stop reading the pages, making the whole process slower. But of course that's just my guess, not the opinion of a SEO guru.
Interesting! I did not know that. I'll just leave it alone then and wait on Googles spiders to quit eyeing my session ID's.
They did stop on my other two forums, so I'll wait it out.
Thanks Emanuele
@emanuele I will remove the restriction in robots.txt and i found this made my site to get indexed slowly :( (the one i suggested)
Just for grins and giggles, I went to scrubtheweb.com meta tag analizyer and tested my forum and got this:
Meta Tag Analyzer - Results
Now analyzing: http://...........
Warning: The URL you entered sent a redirect "Location: HEADER" response. Below are the redirect "Location: HEADER" responses sent by your web server:
Location:
http://www.........
/index.php?PHPSESSID=824d69a8f5c1d89052a451c5051b0de8;wwwRedirect
Redirection may and often does cause problems with search engines and is the reason for our warning.
The error report below is based on the information found at the final location:
Error: The robots.txt file for this site was not delivered by your web server as "plain text" as required by the robots exclusion standard. Some search engines may get confused and may not be able to index this website. We suggest you correct this as soon as possible.
I don't even see a robots.txt in my Elk folder on the host. As "plain text?" Wonder what that's about. Should I make robot.txt? Apparently, their spider didn't like the redirection in my URL.
I test elkarte.sch.my there but I am not given that any header's or robot's warning as yours. Only title, meta description and keywords advice given as it claims google and yahoo take those as important.
Well, I put a snippet of my URL (the last part where is said REDIRECT) in Google and it took me to a "repair tool" at the SMF forums. I took a chance that it would work on Elk and it did! SMF said to upload "repair_settings.php" and then go to it. I simply followed the instructions and it worked for the REDIRECT problem. Now it looks like PHPSESSID is gone too. Yes!
DONT USE THIS SMF REPAIR TOOL, NOW I CANT POST... LOG SHOWS 33 ERRORS, 2 CRITICAL
The redirect is because of the "www VS non-www" thingy.
Basically if you point to your domainname.tld version, but you have configured in Elk www.domainname.tld, then Elk will redirect you to the "www" version. If you want to avoid that configure it with the domain without www. <= that sentence is a bit awkward. lol
Your correct Emanuele, I actually remember that setting option when I was first installing the forum, I chose to use www. my domain. com If I'd known it would cause all this, I would have avoided the www.
I personally prefer the www... but I'm old-fashioned. :P
Any reason why you are still using www?
I don't know why but I also use www on all websites.
It doesn't matter if you use www or not, don't use both, you will get duplicated content
Duplicated content, if i re-direct www users to non-www too?
Nope, you don't get duplicated content if you use a redirect. You get duplicated content if you can access your site through www and also without www