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Overly-Dynamic URL

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  • dellamoda
    dellamoda last edited by Nov 19, 2012, 4:26 AM

    Hi,

    We have over 5000 pages showing under

    Overly-Dynamic URL error

    Our ecommerce site uses Ajax and we have several different filters like, Size, Color, Brand and we therefor have many different urls like,

    http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Pumps.html?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

    http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all

    http://www.dellamoda.com/designer-handbags.html?use_selected_filter=Y&option=manufacturer%3A&page3

    Could we use the robots.txt file to disallow these from showing as duplicate content? and do we need to put the whole url in there?

    like:

    Disallow: /*?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

    if not how far into the url should be disallowed?

    So far we have added the following to our robots,txt

    Disallow: /?sort=title

    Disallow: /?use_selected_filter=Y

    Disallow: /?sort=price

    Disallow: /?clearall=Y

    Just not sure if they are correct.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you,Kami

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
    • SebastianCowie
      SebastianCowie last edited by Nov 19, 2012, 6:09 AM Nov 19, 2012, 6:09 AM

      Hi Kami,

      It's unfortunate, but a number of modern day e-commerce platforms still suffer from poor canonicalisation and multiple URL's.

      If possible, rather than blocking off access to those queries via robots.txt or meta, I'd start by trying to specify a canonical URL when a query is created.

      E.G

      Query: http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all
      Canonical: http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html

      Failing that I'd try to implement a "follow,noindex" meta tag or via x-robots if you're any good with apache.

      If that's still a no go, then try GWT, Google is getting much better at handling dynamic URL's within e-commerce platforms and you can specify which queries Google should ignore directly within GWT

      There's a great post on Moz that deals with e-commerce and canonicalisation - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/qa-from-ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues-webinar - I'd suggest starting there!

      As a last resort I'd look to block the URL's within robots.txt, but this prevents crawlers from flowing freely within your site and can result in poor indexation.

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