GWT, Editing URL Parameters for Ecommerce Features
-
I have had the setting of "let googlebot decide" on managing my URL parameters on an Ecommerce site in Magento. The products I sell come in different sizes and colors and finishes etc.
These parameters are showing up in Google Webmaster Tools and set for "let googlebot decide". Some of them have as many as 8 million urls monitored.
I changed the editing option to clam these parameters as "narrow searches", but still left the option to "let googlebot decide" (versus block urls).
Will blocking these erroneous urls serve any benefit? Does blocking these help with the crawl/seo?
-
Magento will generally canonicalize correctly by default. What I'm guessing you're seeing are category pages that have variables for faceted navigation - again, a pretty common issue in Magento. I've seen and even "fixed" this issue for past clients with no noticeable results.
If you ARE having problems getting your pages into Google's index (check indexation status in Webmaster tools and look for exact product/category URLs to check) there is a plugin that will remove the variables for faceted navigation on category pages. The main downside is that someone who emials/shares a link will not share it with the filters/sorting attached.
Generally I recommend leaving it alone. If you're not having indexation problems, though, it should be fine to leave alone and let Google figure it out.
-
Hi Nathan,
I tend to agree with Patrick, but if you aren't seeing any issues with SERP rankings then you may not wish to go changing anything.
If you plan to go ahead, here are my thoughts.
Don't go blocking the pages rather look into canonical tags, I asked a similar question yesterday and was pointed to some articles that proved useful.
Moz's guide on Canonicalization would be my first go to.
Plus there is always the Google guide on duplicate content which I would imagine you have already looked at - But just in case that's here.
If it's a case of TL;DR - There is little damage that can be done with correctly set up canonical tags, so get in touch with your web developer or hit the research harder and just set them up wither way. Adding the Canonical tags will do no harm and help rule out any duplicate content concerns.
Hope that helps,
Richard
-
Hi there
I wouldn't block these pages so long as you have your parameters set up in Google Webmaster Tools, as well as indicated paginated content.
Remember, there are opportunities with canonical tags as well, so again, I see no reason to block these pages.
As long as you take proper steps to avoid duplicate content and let engines know what is happening, you should be fine.
Hope this helps, this is just my opinion - good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
All URLs in the site is 302 redirected to itself
Hi everyone, I have a problem with a website wherein all URLs (homepage, inner pages) are 302 redirected. This is based on Screaming Frog crawl. But the weird thing is that they are 302 redirected to themselves which doesn't make any sense. Example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alex_goldman
https://www.example.com.au/ is 302 redirected to https://www.example.com.au/ https://www.example.com.au/shop is 302 redirected to https://www.example.com.au/shop https://www.example.com.au/shop/dresses is 302 redirected to https://www.example.com.au/shop/dresses Have you encountered this issue? What did you do to fix it? Would be very glad to hear your responses. Cheers!0 -
Changing URLS: from a short well optimised URL to a longer one – What's the traffic risk
I'm working with a client who has a website that is relatively well optimised, thought it has a pretty flat structure and a lot of top level pages. They've invested in their content over the years and managed to rank well for key search terms. They're currently in the process of changing CMS and as a result of new folder structuring in the CMS the URLs for some pages look to have significantly changed. E.g Existing URL is: website.com/grampians-luxury-accommodation which ranked quite well for luxury accommodation grampians New URL when site is launched on new CMS would be website.com/destinations/victoria/grampians My feeling is that the client is going to lose out on a bit of traffic as a result of this. I'm looking for information or ways or case studies to demonstrate the degree of risk, and to help make a recommendation to mitigate risk.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moge0 -
Mixing static.htm urls and dynamic urls on a Windows IIS Server?
Hi all, We've had a website originally built using static html with .htm extensions ranking well in Google hence we want to keep those pages/urls. We are on a dedicated sever (Windows IIS). However our developer has custom made a new DYNAMIC section for the site which shows new added products dynamically and allows them to be booked online via shopping cart. We are having problems displaying them both on the same domain even if we put the dynamic section withing its own subfolder and keep the static htms in the root. Is it possible to have both function on IIS (even if they may have to function a little separately)? Does anyone have previous experience of this kind of issue or a way of making both work? What setup do we need to do on the dedicated server.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
301 redirect to a temporary URL
Hi there, What would happen if I redirected a set of URLs to a temporary URL structure. And then a few weeks later redirected the original URLs and temporary URLs to the final permanent URLs? So for example:A -> B for a few weeks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie
then: A->C and B->C where:
C is the final destination URL.
B is the temporary destination
A is the original URL. The reason we are doing this is the naming of the URLs and pages are different, and we wish to transition our customers carefully from old to new. I am looking for a pure technical response.
Would we lose link juice? Does Google care if we permanently redirect to a set of 'temporary' URLs, and then permanently redirect to a set of what we think are permanent URLs? Cheers, Simon0 -
Company Blog at a different URL
Ok, I have been doing a lot of work over the past 6 months, disavowing low quality links from spammy directories to our company website, etc. However, my efforts seem to have had a negative, not positive effect. This has brought me back to reconsidering what we are doing as we have lost a good amount of traction on the nationwide Google rankings specifically. Considering our company blog - platinumcctv(dot)net - we have used this blog for a long time to inform customers of new products, software developments and then to provide them links to purchase those components. Last week, I revamped the nearly default wordpress theme to another on a piece of advice. However, someone told me that all of our links should be nofollow, even though it is a company blog because we have many links coming from this domain, and it could be found as spammy. Potato/Potato - But before I start the tedious task of changing every link to no follow on a whim, i searched a lot, but have found no CLEAR substantiation of this. Any ideas? Other recommendations appreciated as well! Platinum-CCTV(dot)com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PTCCTV0 -
Does a sitemap override Google parameter handling?
This question might seem silly, but I'll ask anyway. We have an eCommerce site with a ton of duplicate content, mostly caused by faceted navigation. In researching ways to reduce the clutter, I've decided to use Google parameter handling to stop Googlebot from crawling pages with certain parameters, like: sort order, page #, etc... Now my question: If I set all of these parameters so that Googlebot doesn't crawl the grids, how will they ever find the individual product pages? We do upload a sitemap with all of the product pages. Does this solve my issue? Or, should I handle the duplicate content with noindex, follow tag? Or, is there an even better way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Could this URL issue be affecting our rankings?
Hi everyone, I have been building links to a site for a while now and we're struggling to get page 1 results for their desired keywords. We're wondering if a web development / URL structure issue could be to blame in what's holding it back. The way the site's been built means that there's a 'false' 1st-level in the URL structure. We're building deeplinks to the following page: www.example.com/blue-widgets/blue-widget-overview However, if you chop off the 2nd-level, you're not given a category page, it's a 404: www.example.com/blue-widgets/ - [Brings up a 404] I'm assuming the web developer built the site and URL structure this way just for the purposes of getting additional keywords in the URL. What's worse is that there is very little consistency across other products/services. Other pages/URLs include: www.example.com/green-widgets/widgets-in-green www.example.com/red-widgets/red-widget-intro-page www.example.com/yellow-widgets/yellow-widgets I'm wondering if Google is aware of these 'false' pages* and if so, if we should advise the client to change the URLs and therefore the URL structure of the website. This is bearing in mind that these pages haven't been linked to (because they don't exist) and therefore aren't being indexed by Google. I'm just wondering if Google can determine good/bad URL etiquette based on other parts of the URL, i.e. the fact that that middle bit doesn't exist. As a matter of fact, my colleague Steve asked this question on a blog post that Dr. Pete had written. Here's a link to Steve's comment - there are 2 replies below, one of which argues that this has no implication whatsoever. However, 5 months on, it's still an issue for us so it has me wondering... Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gmorgan0 -
Duplicate URL home page
I just got a duplicate URL error on by SEOMOZ report - and I wonder if I should worry about it Assume my site is named www.widgets.com I'm getting duplicate url from http://www.widgets.com & http://www.widgets.com/ Do the search engines really see this as different on the home page? The general drift on the web is that You site should look like Home page = http://www.widgets.com And subpages http://www.widgets.com/widget1/ Of course it seems as though the IIS7 slash tool will rewrite everything Including the home page to a slash.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasErb0