add to cart indexing issue

Cart Bug & SEO Issue After Switching to Woodmart

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding the issue you are experiencing with your cart and SEO after switching to the WoodMart theme. To assist you more accurately, could you please elaborate on the specific problems you’re encountering? Are there any error messages, or certain functionalities not working as expected?

If available, providing screenshots of the issues or describing any changes made during the switch could also be helpful. Additionally, if you suspect the problem is related to specific settings, please let us know.

In some cases, reviewing your website’s settings or backend may be necessary. You can share any sensitive information, such as URLs or credentials, securely using the Private content field in your reply.

Looking forward to your response so we can assist you further.

Regards

Google Search Results display truncated URLs like https://pxin.in/product/… with no title or description (showing “No information is available for this page”). Display truncated URLs like https://pxin.in/product/… with no title or description (showing “No information is available for this page”).

Clicking on these links in search results automatically adds random products to the cart without user action. Affected URLs contain unwanted parameters like ?add-to-cart=xxxx even though the user didn’t click “Add to Cart.” Affected URLs contain unwanted parameters like ?add-to-cart=xxxx even though the user didn’t click “Add to Cart.” Google is either not indexing the meta or wrongly indexing the wrong variant of the URL. Add to cart is disallowed in robots.txt.
Sharing example URLs like:
https://pxin.in/product/27-inch-1610-monitor-privacy-screen-protector/?add-to-cart=7447
https://pxin.in/product/32-inch169-curved-monitor-privacy-filter-anti-glare-anti-blue-light/?add-to-cart=7508

Attachments:

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Hi Artem,

Thank you for your response.

Since switching to the WoodMart theme, we are experiencing a critical SEO and UX issue caused by the theme’s product listing behavior.

Issue Summary:
Problem:
Google is indexing product URLs with ?add-to-cart=xxx query parameters (example below), which leads to products being auto-added to the cart when clicked from search results.

Example:

https://pxin.in/product/27-inch-1610-monitor-privacy-screen-protector/?add-to-cart=7447
Unwanted Behavior:
When users click these Google search results, a product is added to their cart without any user action. This causes a bad user experience, and raises false cart activity concerns.

SEO Impact:
These add-to-cart URLs:

Are getting indexed by Google (confirmed as recently as 2 days ago).

Display “No information available” or no meta content.

Override our canonical URLs and harm product page rankings.

We confirmed that the source code includes links (auto-generated by related product blocks or upsells, likely controlled by the theme).

We already:

Blocked ?add-to-cart= in robots.txt.

Set canonical tags for all product pages.

Prevented these URLs in sitemaps.

Yet Google continues to index them because they are still present in anchor tags rendered by the theme.

Attachments:

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Hello,

To better assist you, could you kindly test the functionality with default WordPress themes such as TwentyTwenty or WooCommerce Storefront? This will help us determine whether the issue stems from our theme or elsewhere.

Regards

Hi Artem,

Thank you for your response.

This issue is causing a major SEO and UX breakdown for us and needs immediate resolution.

We’ve already taken all standard precautions:

?add-to-cart= is blocked in robots.txt

Canonical tags are set correctly on all product pages

These URLs are excluded from our sitemap

Despite that, Google is still indexing these malformed URLs (e.g., ?add-to-cart=xxx) because they exist in anchor tags rendered by your theme’s upsell or related product sections. This leads to the following severe issues:

Google shows “No information available” for such URLs

Products are auto-added to users’ carts when clicking from Google – without their consent

It creates false activity, hurts credibility, and kills product rankings

We strongly believe this is related to the WoodMart theme behavior, not core WooCommerce. We also reviewed source code and found that upsell/related links are appending full add-to-cart URLs with parameters, causing the leak.

Please:

Confirm if the theme renders such links by default.

Provide a workaround to strip or block ?add-to-cart links from internal anchor tags.

Let us know if there’s a way to override related/upsell templates safely.

This is business-critical and is damaging our brand reputation. Kindly prioritize this and advise next steps.

Best regards,
Sandeep
Founder – pxin.in

[Author]

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