Removing Stores locator page

[Guy Scharf]

Looking through my raw access logs, I discovered that Googlebot was indexing a page named http://xxxx/Stores. We don't have any store locations in the database, there are no CMS or other links to Stores that I can find (I had removed the CMS link long ago). The Store block is uninstalled. The Admin directory is excluded from indexing via robots.txt (and by its own .htaccess file).

 

Yet this page still exists. And I presume that once Google finishes its indexing that I'll be able to search and find it.

 

How do I make that page disappear completely? And how did Google find it? Is there a link somewhere that I am not seeing?

[jhnstcks]

You could try deleting the stores.tpl file in your theme and also the stores.php file in the root folder. Are you able to browse to the page manually? Alternatively, you could set up a 301 redirect in your htaccess file to direct any traffic to that page back to your homepage.

[Guy Scharf]

I just found that the PrestaShop gsitemap module automatically adds Stores to the sitemap. I commented that out and at least that cleans up the site map, which may be what caused Google to index the page. If that gets it out of the search engine's view, I'll be happy about indexing.

 

Yes, I can browse to the page directly. http://xxxx/Stores brings up the store locator, which was quite a surprise!

 

I like redirection as another approach, and will look into that.

 

(I am using PrestaShop 1.4.8.2.)

Edited October 13, 2012 by Guy Scharf (see edit history)