SEO disaster in our Spreadshops

English Spreadshop
#1

I noticed a new feature that was recently added to our Spreadshops. It’s called React Helmet and it’s meant to improve the SEO characteristics of our shops. Which is a good idea. React Helmet injects all kinds of stuff into the headers of the pages in our shops. Things like meta tags for sharing on Facebook and Twitter, a canonical link for search engines and micro data in JSON LD format. Which is nice for simple Spreadshops like this: https://shop.spreadshirt.ie/st-patricks-day-shirt/

If you have your shops embedded in your website however, it’s a SEO disaster.

Let’s look at a simple case. I have a Spreadshop with Easter T-Shirts embedded in my shop. That means all the original Spreadshop url’s, now can be found on an embedded url. I’ll take one of the shirts as an example:

Spreadshop url:
https://shop.spreadshirt.de/ostern-t-shirts/der+osterhase+malt+ein+osterei-A113317975

Embedded url:
https://www.cardvibes.com/de/theme-t-shirt-shops/ostern-t-shirts#!/der+osterhase+malt+ein+osterei-A113317975

In the old day’s the Spreadshop url would redirect to the embedded url, which was nice. This doesn’t work anymore, it redirects to the homepage of the shop, which is bad. This isn’t the biggest problem though.

The React Helmet injects the Spreadshop urls in the embedded pages, which is a total SEO disaster. On the embedded pages Google is told the canonical url is the Spreadshop url. When Google follows that, it gets redirect to the embedded homepage. Not the productpage Google was spidering. The only result can be a deletion of all embedded shop pages from the Google index. So much for SEO… The same case can be made for Facebook and Twitter sharing. That won’t work as long as React Helmet injects the wrong urls into the pages.

There can be only one of two solutions that hopefully will be implemented on short notice:
1: Spreadshirt turns off the React Helmet functionality for embedded shops.
2: Spreadshirt starts injecting the right url’s in the various location tags that get injected by React Helmet

I would really like to hear from Spreadshirt when and if one of these solutions will be implemented.

2 Likes
#2

OFFTOPIC
Come back to the dark side of Spreadplugin :wink:

1 Like
#3

I would, but I just took a look at http://lovetee.de/ which, I asume, is using the Spreadplugin. It has the same problem.

#4

you’re right, but it’s outdated, I built a new site called https://www.mommyshirt.com/ with the plugin :slight_smile:

#5

Aha, I see. Nice!
But that’s not really a Spreadshop site then.

#6

Yes, you’ll be happy to hear that this is already on the todo-list of our devs :slight_smile:

The solution 1) will be probably implemented still this week and the solution 2) a bit later, once the function is ready. So fear not!

#7

Hi @Sara,

Happy isn’t quite it. It’s kinda logic a mistake this big will be corrected, but to me it is unbelievable mess-ups this big are being made by a company like Spreadshirt.

Stuff like this is being put online without thinking it through. It’s all not really rocket science you know. Meanwhile Google is spidering Spreadshops and dumping them from the index. God knows when they will be back in. So ‘probably a solution this week’ is by far not good enough. The React Helmet disaster should be stopped this moment.

#8

Alright, I understand your point entirely. I’m afraid here it’s my personal failure as I can’t always contain my positive spirit and tone - I was born with it :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll try to get some more information for you today on the topic and all your feedback is in any case forwarded.

#9

OK, thnx @sara

#10

Alright, FYI: we’ve disabled this functionality for JS-integrated shops until we have a proper solution. Thanks for your feedback, it’s much appreciated. It’s sometimes needed to ensure we got our priorities right.

Edit: I’ll close this thread for now, as we have no additional information at this point in time.

1 Like
#11