Hi, sorry I missed your reply. Unfortunately I don’t have any screenshots of merchant center at the time of the issue as I was able to modify the code to disable the restriction for GoogleBot specifically. This is the code in question:
// woo-product-country-base-restrictions/include/products-restriction.php
/*
* Check restricted by the product id for simple product
*
* @since 1.0.0
*/
public function is_restricted_by_id( $id ) {
$restriction = get_post_meta( $id, '_fz_country_restriction_type', true );
// If Googlebot we exit so it can track the pages in GSC
if(strstr(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']), "googlebot"))
{
return false;
}
if ( 'specific' == $restriction || 'excluded' == $restriction ) {
$countries = get_post_meta( $id, '_restricted_countries', true );
if ( empty( $countries ) || ! is_array( $countries ) ) {
$countries = array();
}
$customercountry = $this->get_country();
if ( 'specific' == $restriction && !in_array( $customercountry, $countries ) ) {
return true;
}
if ( 'excluded' == $restriction && in_array( $customercountry, $countries ) ) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
This block of code somehow affects certain user agents, like Google and Bing (but not Yahoo for some reason). I’m guessing it must be the way the bot accesses the page, leading to a 404 error if the product is set to be restricted. Could also be related to which country the googlebot server is coming from, I’m not sure. I added the line:
// If Googlebot we exit so it can track the pages in GSC
if(strstr(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']), "googlebot"))
{
return false;
}
To exit the function if the plugin encounters googlebot. One could add other bots if necessary depending on their situation.
I think you can replicate the issue by creating some products in Woo and setting some restrictions on them and then testing with https://botsimulator.com/index.php
It was not an easy issue to track down because when testing the links on Google Search Console, the live test would work but the normal inspection from the indexer would return 404.
