Google Penalties for osCommerce Title Tags

Hey Guys,

I use osCommerce for my web store, and I am working on raising it up in the google page ranks. In my webmaster tools account on google, I am getting penalty's for my pages having duplicate title tags. These are basically, product ID pages.

What I mean is, on the one page, product_info.php Where it dynamically pulls in the products info, even though each product is different, because its all on the same page (product_info.php) Google is marking each product listing, because it has the same title tag as the last one.

I want to know, what are the penalties for this, and if there is any kind of way around it? Either in osCommerce, or Google, or a PHP workaround.

Hi, maybe you can get around it by using this
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,207/

I use this on my oscommerce store and it's really good.

I also recommend these which I use also:
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2796/

Does osCommerce create a unique name for each page based on the product name? If not, it should be written to do so. Each of your products should have its own page and the page filename should closely match the title which also matches the name of the product. Google will play much better with words than it will with something like "product_detail.php?productID=857"

Thanks for the great mods musik. I forgot to get back here and post the results!

I did use both mods, but what finally cleared up the Issue, AND jumped my site up a couple of points in the rankings, was this mod: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2428

It takes the name of the product being displayed, and displays it in the page title. That worked out the best, and my google content analysis showed clean for keyword and title problems.

(note the latest update for the mod, was 2005. But it worked in the latest version of osCommerce )

mod_rewrite would probably help a ton, too

I checked out that mod. I did mine manually so I could put my main keyword in the title as well but the product name and author is in the title too.

Can I ask what tools you use to track your progress in the search engines?

At the moment, I have a webmasters account with google. From there I can get sales trackers, sitemap monitoring, content analysis, etc. Its the main one I work with. Everything is really kinda manual labor, but I find the better it works with googles content monitors, the better in the others. So thats the only tool I am really using at the moment.

Ahh ok.

What tools do you use for your tracking musik? and what mods do you use for your osCommerce store? I have two retail sites online already, with 2 more in the works. I am trying to optimize each one as best I can, any other advice you can give me? Thanks!

I use Google Analytics with my adwords although for some reason its not tracking sign ups or sales which I need to look into. I also use a stats program which gives me a list of keywords people are using to find my site. I use those to optimise my adwords campaigns.

Here are some other addons I've put on my site:

All products page
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... ,all+prods

Featured Products
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... ed+product

These are some on the list that I am going to install shortly:
Newsletter & Subscribers
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... management

Supertracker
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... pertracker

Wishlist
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... ,wish+list

Thickness depending letter or package shipping module
http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/4493
http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/4484

Thinking about these ones:
Purchase without account
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... ut+account

Shop by price infobox
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/con ... p+by+price


My OH is at the moment developing an addon which will allow people to upload and maintain their products using a CSV file. There is a few mods available which do this already but they are clunky, badly written and difficult to use. It'll be finished by the end of the week. I had him program it because I have a few customers with oscommerce sites I am developing that I promised for them to maintain their stock would be easy (lol) they have about a thousand products and can now maintain them from one master CSV spreadsheet.

It's all learning though and I'm getting there slowly.

The hardest thing I am finding is getting good links with other relevant sites. That take a lot of work!!