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Filter pages and faceted navigation for stores

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Every filter on a category page (size, colour, brand, price, sort order) can create a new URL, and combinations multiply fast. Google's documentation on faceted navigation warns that crawlers can spend their time on "a very large number" of these URLs before finding them useless, and discover your new products more slowly as a result. The fix is to decide which filter pages deserve to be found, and to keep the rest out of the crawl.

Decide which filter pages matter

Most filter combinations are only useful to a shopper already on your site. A few match what people search for, such as "black running shoes" or a category filtered by a popular brand. Treat those as real landing pages: a clean URL, a unique title and description, a short intro and internal links pointing to them. Everything else should not compete for Google's attention.

Option 1: keep filter URLs out of the crawl

If you don't need filtered URLs in Google Search, block them:

  • robots.txt: disallow the filter parameters, while keeping product pages and the unfiltered category crawlable.
  • URL fragments: filters written after a # are generally ignored for crawling and indexing.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?*color=
Disallow: /*?*size=
Disallow: /*?*sort=

Check the patterns against your real URLs before deploying, so you don't block category or product pages by mistake.

Option 2: make crawlable filter URLs efficient

If some filtered pages should stay crawlable, Google recommends making them predictable:

  1. Use the standard & separator between parameters, not commas or semicolons.
  2. Keep filters in the same order in every URL and prevent duplicate filters.
  3. Return a 404 for combinations with no results, nonsensical filters and pagination pages that don't exist, instead of an empty page or a redirect.

Canonical tags and nofollow

A rel="canonical" from filtered URLs to the main category may reduce their crawling over time, and rel="nofollow" on filter links can help only if every link to that URL carries it. Google describes both as generally less effective in the long run than the two options above, so use them as a complement. Make sure the canonical points to a page that really exists and returns 200.

Keep titles and descriptions unique

Indexed filter pages need their own titles and meta descriptions, and some real content, or they look like near-duplicates of the main category. See the guide on thin content for what to add.

How Averifly helps

Averifly flags duplicate page titles, canonical tags that point elsewhere, thin category pages and sitemap URLs with no internal link pointing to them, across a sample of your store. See every check on the rules page, then run a free scan to find the filter pages that need attention.

Frequently asked questions

Should filter pages be indexed?

Only the few that match real searches, such as a category filtered by one popular brand or colour. Most combinations of filters add nothing for searchers and should be kept out of the crawl.

What does Google recommend for faceted navigation?

Either block filter URLs from crawling, for example with robots.txt, or keep them crawlable and make them efficient: a standard & separator, a consistent filter order, and a 404 for combinations with no results.

Is a canonical tag enough?

Google says rel=canonical on filtered URLs may reduce their crawling over time, but describes it as generally less effective in the long run than blocking crawling or making the URLs efficient.

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