Loop problem indexing shopping cart results

[jason hessley]

I'm using zoom to index shopping cart items. The shopping cart passes page# variables from page to page and creates back links on those pages. The result is that zoom follows each link because the query string has changed. I end up with one cart item being indexed many times.

Any ideas on how to prevent this from happening?

Setting the start page to "follow and index from this page only" works in most cases. However, some inquiries return more results than my shopping cart will allow on one page.

[David]

See this FAQ for a possible solution.

Q. How should I index my site if it features a message board, forum, or calendar and other similarly complex scripts?

[jason hessley]

Does Zoom ignore the base url when using the "Follow all links on this page only" option? If so, is there a way to only index one level AND stay within the base url?

[Ray]

If your page content is consistent (that is, it does not contain dynamically changing advertisements or a dynamically generated current date/time, and the page content for the item is exactly the same despite different URLs), then you can consider using the CRC duplicate page detection option ("Configure"->"Scan options"->"Use CRC to skip files with identical content"). If the page content changes in any way with the different URLs, then this won't work.

Does Zoom ignore the base url when using the "Follow all links on this page only" option?

Yes.

If so, is there a way to only index one level AND stay within the base url?

No. In such cases, you might want to just come up with a list of the individual pages that you want to index (which would be the internal links on the start page), save it in a text file with ", INDEX_ONLY" after each line, and import them all in as individual start points.

See the Users Guide chapter 7.3 for more information.

[jason hessley]

Using the "Follow all links on this page only" option, I created a start point point for each page of my shopping cart results. I used the skip option to exclude every other directory that was linked to from the results page. It seems to be a decent work around for indexing shopping cart results without ending up in an infinite url loop.

An option to index one level within the base url would be a great help in this situation.

This is a GREAT product with excellent documentation and even better service. Thanks for your fast and helpful replies.