Googlebot triggers 404 on MySite.com/?product_variation=1234

Could it have to do with robots.txt?
Or perhaps something I overlooked with sitemaps?

Surely I can’t be the only person with this problem…

71 new errors after the weekend.

Almost all of them are variations and orderby=popularity

How can I block googlebot from accessing these nonexistent pages?

Hi apcgallery!

Did you solve that problem?

Same problem here. But only with “?orderby=popularity”.
600+ 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools …

Please help! Thanks!

WordPress 3.5.2
Woocommerce Version 2.0.12
Wordpress SEO (Yoast) Version 1.4.15
WooCommerce Deutsch (de_DE) Version 3.0.12

Well, It’s been a little while. I tried many things- I don’t remember what worked- I don’t even remember what all I tried– but I don’t get those 404’s anymore. If I left anything out, I’ll add them on later. See if any of these work for you.

1. Try removing popularity and rating from the dropdown all-together.
-If you 404 on popularity, you probably will on rating too. Put this in your custom CSS. I’m not positive it keeps robots away but it keeps real visitors from 404’ing on them.

/* Woocommerce Remove Order by Popularity and Rating */
.orderby option[value="popularity"] {display: none;}
.orderby option[value="rating"] {display: none;}

2. Here are my robots.txt disallows. Again, I don’t know if it helped with the 404’s, but it’s a pretty solid list.

Disallow: /wp-*
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.opml$
Disallow: /*.shtml$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /wp-content/managewp
Disallow: /wp-content/upgrade
Disallow: /wp-content/w3tc-config
Disallow: /etc
Disallow: /include
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /templates
Disallow: /xmlrpc.php
Disallow: /comment-page-
Disallow: /?product_variation=
Disallow: /product-tag

3. Another way to cut down on 404’s (if you haven’t already done so) is by adding a blacklist to your .htaccess file. This is more for security, but it cuts down on 404’s by keeping hackerbots and spammerbots away.
-The one from hackrepair.com is very good: https://pastebin.com/5Hw9KZnW

That’s all I got for now, let me know if it works out.

Hi apcgallery!

Thanks for your answer and your solutions. I found another way to solve the problem.

I realised that somehow not all products in the popularity order were shown. I found out that the popularity order is based on the “total_sales” query in woocommerce. My shop is only a catalogue – there is no possibility to buy any products. This could have been the problem.
In \wp-content\plugins\woocommerce\classes you can find the “class-wc-query.php” here I changed

case 'popularity' :
$args['meta_key'] = 'total_sales';

into:

case 'popularity' :
$args['meta_key'] = '';

This is the // default – menu_order now.

This solved my problem.

Cheers,
Malte

“Rufio! Rufio! RU! FI! OHHHHHH!”

I couldn’t resist.

Great going. So your fix changes the popularity ordering to the default ordering?