google is hammering my shoping cart!

excessive order ID's

[Roxster]

My Google mini search appliance is hammering my shopping cart giving me excessive order ID's. I am in the 5 million + order id range, but actual orders are severely far less. Everytime a guest adds something to my shopping cart a new order ID is given so order ID's should skip around, but not to this degree.

I have tried to train google mini to not spider cgi-bin files, and also added cgi-bin to robots.txt. I have also reduced the frequency to scan once a week, but that only slows the problem a little.



What else can I do?

[ssgumby]

Why in the world would your cart create an order id when someone adds something to the cart?

[rachel123]

Your cart needs to nofollow the Add-to-cart links at a minimum. The better approach is to recognize the UA as a bot and not even display the add to cart or check out links.

And ditto to ssgumby.

[Roxster]

I don't know why they do it that way! Other carts I used had an order number which was assigned whether or not you checked out, and an order ID which was sequential and assigned at the final checkout process.

I don't know how to no follow an add to cart link, but that is a great idea.

[rocknbil]

As someone who's programmed lots of custom solutions, you really need to have someone look at this. There are only rare situations where a followed link should create an entry in a database, and a shopping cart is not one of them. If this is going on, you may have many other problems in this cart.

[vordmeister]

Using a form submit to add products to carts still seems to work fairly well for avoiding spiders (for now). Cookies can be helpful too.

Triggering something from a direct text link sounds like the wrong way to do it. I'm not sure using nofollow would make much difference with most spiders.

[Roxster]

<form action="../cgi-bin/shop1.aspx" method="POST">

It looks like the add to cart part is a form!

Who is someone who looks at this? The shopping cart company suggested I contact google!

[enigma1]

The form line of code you posted doesn't say much. There could be other links submitting the form using jscripts perhaps. If a spider manages to create orders by adding items to your cart you need to address the issue with the software you are using and whoever made it.

First of all you do not accept add to cart items right away from any visitor. Not unless the server first generates a session for the visitor. Then you should generate an order id when the visitor completes the order not when he adds something to the cart.