Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

MANADev SEO Layered Nav Plus – Search Results URL Issue

I have the MANADev Layered Navigation Plus extension for Magento 1.9. The support period has expired or I’d ask them, but hopefully someone else has this and knows what to do.

I have it working great for all navigation pages as well as search, but search seems to be acting a little odd. When you first search using Magento’s stock search it takes you to /catalogsearch/result?q=searchstring. If you then pick a layered nav filter, Mana takes over and the URL becomes /search/[my-attribute]/[my-value]?q=searchstring. Then, if I remove that filter, instead of being taken back to /catalogsearch/result I’m taken to /search?q=searchstring. For some reason, this actually works live, which is great, but it gives a 404 on my test machine.

I’m sure this is a simple config issue, I just don’t understand what it’s doing. Furthermore, I’d much prefer consistency in the URLs. Even if it works, the fact that “/catalogsearch/result?q=searchstring” is the exact same content as “/search?q=searchstring” is not good for SEO purposes. How can I make this play well together?