Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to exclude URL filter searches in robots.txt
-
When I look through my MOZ reports I can see it's included 'pages' which it shouldn't have included i.e. adding filtering rules such as this one http://www.mydomain.com/brands?color=364&manufacturer=505
How can I exclude all of these filters in the robots.txt? I think it'll be:
Disallow: /*?color=$
Is that the correct syntax with the $ sign in it? Thanks!
-
Unless you're specifically calling out Bing or Baidu... in your Robots.txt file they should follow the same directives as Google so testing with Google's Robots.txt file tester should suffice for all of them.
-
Yes, but what about bing and rest of Search Engine?
-
Adrian,
I agree that there certainly is a right answer to the question posted, as the question asks specifically about one way to manage the issue, being a block of filters in the robots.txt file. What I was getting at is that this may or may not necessarily be the "best" way, and that I'd need to look at your site and your unique situation to figure our which would be the best solution for your needs.
It is very likely that with these parameters a robots.txt file block is the best approach, assuming the parameters aren't added by default into category page or category pagination page navigational links, as then it would affect the bot's ability to crawl the site. Also, if people are linking to those URLs (highly unlikely though) you may consider a robots meta noindex,follow tag instead so the pagerank could flow to other pages.
And I'm not entirely sure the code you provided above will work if the blocked parameter is the first one in the string (e.g. domain.com/category/?color=red) as there is the additional wildcard between the ? and the parameter. I would advise testing this in Google Webmaster Tools first.
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
- Under Crawl, click Blocked URLs.
- If it's not already selected, click the Test robots.txt tab.
- Copy the content of your robots.txt file, and paste it into the first box.
- In the URLs box, list the site to test against.
- In the User-agents list, select the user-agents you want (e.g. Googlebot)
-
There certainly is a right answer to my question - I already posted it here earlier today:
Disallow: /*?color=
Disallow: /?*manufacturer=Without the $ at the end which would otherwise denote the end of the URL.
-
Hello Adrian,
The Moz reports are meant to help you uncover issues like this. If you're seeing non-canonical URLs in the Moz report then there is a potential issue for Google, Bing and other search engines as well.
Google does respect wildcards (*) in the robots.txt file, though it can easily be done wrong. There is not right or wrong answer to the issue of using filters or faceted navigation, as each circumstance is going to be different. However, I hope some of these articles will help you identify the best approach for your needs:
(Note: Faceted Navigation is not exactly the same as category filters, but the issues and possible solutions are very similar
)Building Faceted Navigation That Doesn't Suck Faceted Navigation Whiteboard Friday
Duplicate Content: Block, Redirect or Canonical
Guide to eCommerce Facets, Filters and Categories
Rel Canonical How To and Why Not
Moz.com Guide to Duplicate ContentI don't know how your store handles these (e.g. does it add the filter automatically, or only when a user selects a filter?) so I can't give you the answer, but I promise if you read those articles above you will have a very good understanding of all of the options so you can choose which is best for you. That might end up being as simple as blocking the filters in your robots.txt file, or you may opt for rel canonical, noindex meta tag, ajax, Google parameter handling, etc...
Good luck!
-
It's not Google's index that I'm interested in in this case, it's for the MOZ reports. Moz was including over 10,000 'pages' because it was indexing these URLs. Now I know how to edit the robots.txt Moz will be prevented from indexing them again (we only have around 2,000 real pages, not 10,000)
-
I sought out the answer from a developer and got the following reply, so posting here in case it helps someone else:
To exclude pages with color or manufacture in them you can use
Disallow: /*?color=
Disallow: /?*manufacturer=A question mark in your try should be omitted as it denotes the end of the url
-
Hi
I would recommend excluding these in Google Webmaster Tools. Once logged in to your account under the "Crawl" menu you will find "URL Parameters". Find the relevant parameter in the list on this page and you can tell Google not to index these pages.
Hope this helps.
Steve
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
-
City Name in URL structure
I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
Hi there,
On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.0 -
Home page keyword in url
I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart0 -
Meta Robots index & noindex Both Implemented on Website
I don't want few of the pages of website to get indexed by Google, thus I have implemented meta robots noindex code on those specific pages. Due to some complications I am not able to remove meta robots index from header of every page Now, on specific pages I have both codes 'index & noindex' implemented. Question is: Will Google crawl/index pages which have noindex code along with index code? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Exa0 -
Google is indexing urls with parameters despite canonical
Hello Moz, Google is indexing lots of urls despite the canonical in my site. Those urls are linked all over the site with parameters like ?, and looks like Google is indexing them despite de canonical. Is Google deciding to index those urls because they are linked all over the site? The canonical tag is well implemented.
On-Page Optimization | | Red_educativa0 -
ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO
I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?
On-Page Optimization | | AndieF0 -
Does 'XXX' in Domain get filtered by Google
I have a friend that has xxx in there domain and they are a religious based sex/porn addiction company but they don't show up for the queries that they are optimized against. They have a 12+ year old domain, all good health signs in quality links and press from trusted companies. Google sends them adult traffic, mostly 'trolls' and not the users they are looking for. Has anyone experienced domain word filtering and have a work around or solution? I posted in the Google Webmaster help forums and that community seems a little 'high on their horses' and are trying to hard to be cool. I am not too religious and don't necessarily support the views of the website but just trying to help a friend of a friend with a topic that I have never encountered. here is the url: xxxchurch.com Thanks, Brian
On-Page Optimization | | Add3.com0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0
