Breadcrumbs Uncomplicated

I'm honestly quite heartbroken to receive your unfair and factually incorrect review. In the 10 years I've been making my app, I've had half a dozen like this. They damage my app's reputation and they are wholly wrong:

1. You didn't contact support, but even after you left your review, I contacted you and gave you your money back, even though I was under no obligation to do so. You didn't reply.

2. My app does not bill you directly, only through Shopify.

3. Shopify bills you only for what you use, after you've used it.

4. You were billed for 3 months by Shopify because, after the 10 day free trial, you used the app for January, February and March. Shopify did their job exactly right, as they define in their App charges policy here:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/your-account/manage-billing/billing-charges/types-of-charges/third-party-charges/app-charges

I have no control over Shopify's billing policy and make every effort to make my app outstanding: recently it was awarded "Built for Shopify" status. Reviews like these destroy that reputation and they really hurt.

Thank you for the review! Appreciate your taking the time to post it.

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.

Brilliant. Thank you. Always happy to help where I can.

Thanks for the review. I'm always trying to keep pace with Shopify's evolution of the platform, so making the app multi-lingual has been a top priority. It now supports Shopify's own "Translate & Adapt" or any translation app that translates server-side rendered content. Best of luck with your store.

Thank you, that's absolutely what I'm aiming for. I really appreciate your taking the time to share your experience here. Best of luck with your store. Kind regards, Alex

Thanks very much for your review. I'm glad I could help.

Brilliant. Thanks for the feedback. Best of luck with your store and please let me know if I can help again.