Category Breadcrumbs

I understand from your review that you've not been able to install my app properly. Sadly, this review was the first I heard about it. As I explained in my email yesterday, if you had just contacted support, I would have been happy to help you with that.

I suspect you didn't see category breadcrumbs on your site because you linked all your parent categories to the same /search page. In the "Getting Started" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAhAk5Wltq8) I tried to show how important it is to link categories to Shopify Collections. This mistake was then also highlighted to you as a warning in the Category Advisor on the front page of my app, with instructions on how to fix it. When you also ignored that warning, you left my app without enough information to build a breadcrumb.

All this occurred during the 10-day free trial period, so you were not charged for anything.

I appreciate you may be a non-native English speaker, so I translated my email (and this review) into both French and German. I strive to offer an excellent service, which I hope is evident in the other reviews here, and I would be happy to demonstrate that if you'd be willing to let me support you.

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D'après votre avis, je comprends que vous n'avez pas réussi à installer mon application correctement. Malheureusement, cette critique est la première dont j'en entends parler. Comme je l'ai expliqué dans mon e-mail d'hier, si vous aviez simplement contacté le support, j'aurais été heureux de vous aider.

Je soupçonne que vous n'avez pas vu le fil d'Ariane des catégories sur votre site, car vous avez lié toutes vos catégories parentes à la même page /search. Dans la vidéo « Getting Started » (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAhAk5Wltq8), j'ai essayé de montrer à quel point il est important de lier les catégories aux collections Shopify. Cette erreur vous a ensuite également été signalée sous forme d'avertissement dans le conseiller de catégorie sur la première page de mon application, avec des instructions sur la façon de la corriger. Lorsque vous avez également ignoré cet avertissement, vous avez quitté mon application sans suffisamment d'informations pour créer un fil d'Ariane.

Tout cela s’est produit pendant la période d’essai gratuite de 10 jours, donc rien ne vous a été facturé.

J'apprécie que vous ne soyez pas anglophone, j'ai donc traduit mon e-mail (et cette critique) en français et en allemand. Je m'efforce d'offrir un excellent service, ce qui, je l'espère, est évident dans les autres critiques ici, et je serais heureux de le démontrer si vous acceptez de me laisser vous soutenir.

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Ihrer Bewertung entnehme ich, dass Sie meine App nicht ordnungsgemäß installieren konnten. Leider war diese Rezension die erste, die ich davon gehört habe. Wie ich gestern in meiner E-Mail erklärt habe, hätte ich Ihnen gerne dabei geholfen, wenn Sie sich gerade an den Support gewandt hätten.

Ich vermute, dass Sie auf Ihrer Website keine Kategorie-Breadcrumbs gesehen haben, weil Sie alle Ihre übergeordneten Kategorien mit derselben /search-Seite verknüpft haben. Im „Getting Started“-Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAhAk5Wltq8) habe ich versucht zu zeigen, wie wichtig es ist, Kategorien mit Shopify Collections zu verknüpfen. Dieser Fehler wurde Ihnen dann auch als Warnung im Kategorieratgeber auf der Startseite meiner App mit einer Anleitung zur Behebung angezeigt. Als Sie auch diese Warnung ignoriert haben, fehlten meiner App genügend Informationen, um einen Breadcrumb zu erstellen.

All dies geschah während der 10-tägigen kostenlosen Testphase, sodass Ihnen nichts in Rechnung gestellt wurde.

Ich weiß, dass Sie vielleicht kein englischer Muttersprachler sind, deshalb habe ich meine E-Mail (und diese Bewertung) sowohl ins Französische als auch ins Deutsche übersetzt. Ich bemühe mich, einen exzellenten Service zu bieten, was hoffentlich auch in den anderen Bewertungen hier deutlich wird, und ich würde dies gerne unter Beweis stellen, wenn Sie bereit wären, sich von mir unterstützen zu lassen.

It's very difficult to reply to your review because I think you've fundamentally misunderstood how Shopify works:

1. My app does not create or generate any URLs.
All URLs are generated by Shopify. For example, for every product, Shopify offer multiple URLs. There is the short-form URL, for example (https://breadcrumbs-uncomplicated.myshopify.com/products/technology-computers-desktops-g30ab).

Then there is a long-form URL for every collection that contains that product, for example (https://breadcrumbs-uncomplicated.myshopify.com/collections/technology-computers-desktops-asus/products/technology-computers-desktops-g30ab).

Notice how there's /collections/collection-name in there. Shopify search always generates short-form URLs. Some themes use short-form URLs. Some themes use long-form URLs. Your products are accessible by both.

My app works with both. In fact more than that, it actually tries to help you manage both in whatever way you find most intuitive.

2. Canonical URLs are implicit, never 'generated'
Google says: "A canonical URL is the URL of the best representative page from a group of duplicate pages, according to Google". Because Shopify generates duplicate URLs for each product, you've got a choice. You can either tell Google which is the "best representative page" or not.

3. It's your theme that inserts link rel="canonical" tags.
My app does not generate any link tags. It never ever uses the word 'canonical'. These are generated by your theme. Your issue is with your theme developer. Incidentally, I think your theme developer is right to use rel=canonical link tags. After years of working in this space, I've learned that search engines don't really rank on trivial hints, they rank based on importance signals (such as PageRank based on back-links). The only thing you can achieve with SEO is to avoid confusing them and avoid reducing your rank. Canonical linking is a good example of something that avoids confusing them.

4. My app uses only the links you give it.
The breadcrumbs are generated only using links that you give the app. Everything comes from Shopify Navigation. I don't make anything up. You can optionally choose to use the 'short-link fix' (disabled by default) which allows you to compose product links on collection pages using both the collection name and the product name, but again these link components only come from what you've given the app in Shopify Navigation.

5. My app helps SEO, not hinders it.
As well as generating a visible breadcrumb, my app also (optionally) generates a JSON-LD breadcrumb in HTML. This is structured metadata that tells search engines how the breadcrumb hierarchy is constructed. It has nothing to do with canonical links. It uses only the links that are already used in the breadcrumb, i.e. only links that you have given it in Shopify Navigation.

6. We've discussed this already by email.
I've emailed you about this but recently you've stopped responding, I assume because you're busy as I know storeowners are. I have given significant time to trying to help you with your canonical links, even though they have nothing to do with my app. My line on customer support is that I try to help wherever I can. In spite of all these efforts, you've still left my app an unfair, unjustified and mis-informed 1-star review. I will continue to help in whatever way I'm able, in whatever way you'll let me and whatever way is technically possible within the confines of how the web works, how search engines work and how Shopify works.

I'm so sorry you had a bad experience. I work really hard on my support. If you'd just contacted me, I'd have been really happy to help you.

I understand you had problems installing my app. Back in 2020 we didn't have 2.0 themes like Dawn or the Shopify theme editor, so storeowners had to have liquid coding skills to embed my app. That did used to take a bit longer than 10 minutes. Thankfully most themes now are 2.0 themes so the install process doesn't require that coding experience and is much quicker.

Also I take your accusation that I buy my ratings very seriously. If you look at the dates of my reviews you'll notice that there aren't very many of them and they're distributed over years and years. I understand that typically purchased reviews are delivered within a short window (weeks or days). I hope that gives you some assurance that I have never, nor will never buy a rating or review.

Finally it's now been several years since you left your review (4th September 2020). I contacted you by email on 5th September 2020 to try to help, but I never received a reply. Another customer recently told me that my email had been mislabelled as SPAM, so they never received it. As a result I thought I'd reply to your review now in the hope that you might receive this message.

Kind regards, Alex