Customers using Google's cached page to order

Does anyone else have this problem

[derekwong28]

We used Mals'e for our cart. We get orders for our delisted products all the time. These product pages are no longer available on our site. Therefore, these customers must have ordered through pages kept in Google's cache.

Although this has usually been a minor irritant. This may get more serious as we plan to raise prices across a range of products because of the falling dollar. I wonder whether anybody else has this problem?

[ogletree]

Maybe you could detect if someone made an order from off site and give them an error message.

[bmcgee]

When you remove a product, Google doesn't immediately visit your site and reindex the page. So users aren't necessarily coming in through the "cached" pages on Google. They are likely coming in through the regular pages that have not been reindexed yet.

A shopping cart should check whether the item is valid (still active, and has inventory). I would press the shopping cart maker to implement this feature, or move on to another cart.

[pmac]

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

[Sunshyn]

Did you check through your logs to make sure all the orders with old data definitely came from cached versions on Google? I've always used a database with my cart so the info is automatically updated on the shopping cart page. However, it seems to me that some carts might work when a browser or internet provider cache is out of date, not just Google's.

[sun818]

Might want to read this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Customer demands "old" price they viewed through cache. After a few purchases made through the cache, we disabled cached pages on Google. I think its best when your pricing is dynamic.

[percentages]

pmac's advice is good.

But, I have a question.....is your order page from a secure page that people are finding on Google?

[derekwong28]

No, the pages are not secure. I think that the problem is particular to Mal's because the pricing of the product is built in the hyperlink to Mal's server. We are going to swtich to a a database driven site anyway and so this problem will be served.

I don't want to get rid of our pages in Google. Many users, myself included prefer to use the cache function to view Goolge search results because for one, the search terms are highlighted.

[sun818]

> built in the hyperlink to Mal's server

Using a link is one of two ways to submit cart data. The other way is to use a form based submit.