Large site with faceted navigation using rel=canonical, but Google still has issues
-
First off, I just wanted to mention I did post this on one other forum so I hope that is not completely against the rules here or anything. Just trying to get an idea from some of the pros at both sources. Hope this is received well. Now for the question.....
"Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site:"
Gotta love these messages in GWT. Anyway, I wanted to get some other opinions here so if anyone has experienced something similar or has any recommendations I would love to hear them.
First off, the site is very large and utilizes faceted navigation to help visitors sift through results. I have implemented rel=canonical for many months now to have each page url that is created based on the faceted nav filters, push back to the main category page. However, I still get these damn messages from Google every month or so saying that they found too many pages on the site. My main concern obviously is wasting crawler time on all these pages that I am trying to do what they ask in these instances and tell them to ignore and find the content on page x.
So at this point I am thinking about possibly using robots.txt file to handle these, but wanted to see what others around here thought before I dive into this arduous task. Plus I am a little ticked off that Google is not following a standard they helped bring to the table.
Thanks for those who take the time to respond in advance.
-
Yes that's a different situation. You're now talking about pagination, which quite rightly, canonicals to parent page is not to be used.
For faceted/filtered navigation it seems like canonical usage is indeed the right way to go about it, given Peter's experience just mentioned above, and the article you linked to that says, "...(in part because Google only indexes the content on the canonical page, so any content from the rest of the pages in the series would be ignored)."
-
As for my situation it worked out quite nicely, I just wasn't patient enough. After about 2 months the issue corrected itself for the most part and I was able to reduce about a million "waste" pages out of the index. This is a very large site so losing a million pages in a handful of categories helped me gain in a whole lot of other areas and spread the crawler around to more places that were important for us.
I also spent some time doing some restructuring of internal linking from some of our more authoritative pages that I believe also assisted with this, but in my case rel="canonical" worked out pretty nicely. Just took some time and patience.
-
I should actually add that Google doesn't condone using rel-canonical back to the main search page or page 1. They allow canonical to a "View All" or a complex mix of rel-canonical and rel=prev/next. If you use rel-canonical on too many non-identical pages, they could ignore it (although I don't often find that to be true).
Vanessa Fox just did a write-up on Google's approach:
http://searchengineland.com/implementing-pagination-attributes-correctly-for-google-114970
I have to be honest, though - I'm not a fan of Google's approach. It's incredibly complicated, easy to screw up, doesn't seem to work in all cases, and doesn't work on Bing. This is a very complex issue and really depends on the site in question. Adam Audette did a good write-up:
http://searchengineland.com/five-step-strategy-for-solving-seo-pagination-problems-95494
-
Thanks Dr Pete,
Yes I've used meta no-index on pages that are simply not useful in any way shape or form for Google to find.
I would be hesitant noindexing my filters in question, but it sounds promising that you are backing the canonical approach and there is a latency on reporting. Our PA and DA is extremely high and we get crawled daily, so curious about your measurement tip (inurl) which is a good one!
Many thanks.
Simon
-
I'm working on a couple of cases now, and it is extremely tricky. Google often doesn't re-crawl/re-cache deeper pages for weeks or months, so getting the canonical to work can be a long process. Still, it is generally a very effective tag and can happen quickly.
I agree with others that Robots.txt isn't a good bet. It also tends to work badly with pages that are already indexed. It's good for keeping things out of the index (especially whole folders, for example), but once 1000s of pages are indexed, Robots.txt often won't clean them up.
Another option is META NOINDEX, but it depends on the nature of the facets.
A couple of things to check:
(1) Using site: with inurl:, monitor the faceted navigation pages in the Google index. Are the numbers gradually dropping? That's what you want to see - the GWT error may not update very often. Keep in mind that these numbers can be unreliable, so monitor them daily over a few weeks.
(2) Are there are other URLs you're missing? On a large, e-commerce site, it's entirely possibly this wasn't the only problem.
(3) Did you cut the crawl paths? A common problem is that people canonical, 301-redirect, or NOINDEX, but then nofollow or otherwise cut links to those duplicates. Sounds like a good idea, except that the canonical tag has to be crawled to work. I see this a lot, actually.
-
Did you find a solution for this? I have exactly the same issue and have implemented the rel canonical in exactly the same way.
The issue you are trying to address is improving crawl bandwidth/equity by not letting Google crawl these faceted pages.
I am thinking of Ajax loading in these pages to the parent category page and/or adding nofollow to the links. But the pages have already been indexed, so I wonder if nofollow will have any effect.
Have you had any progress? Any further ideas?
-
Because rel canonical does nothing more than give credit to teh chosen page and aviod duplicat content. it does not tell the SE to stop indexing or redirect. as far as finding the links it has no affect
-
thx
-
OK, sorry I was thinking too many pages, not links.
using no-index will not stop PR flowing, the search engine will still follow the links. -
Yeah that is why I am not real excited about using robots.txt or even a no index in this instance. They are not session ids, but more like:
www.example.com/catgeoryname/a,
www.example.com/catgeoryname/b
www.example.com/catgeoryname/c
etc
which would show all products that start with those letters. There are a lot of other filters too, such as color, size, etc, but the bottom line is I point all those back to just www.example.com/categoryname using rel canonical and am not understanding why it isn't working properly.
-
There are a large number of urls like this because of the way the faceted navigation works and I have considered no index, but somewhat concerned as we do get links to some of these urls and would like to maintain some of that link juice. The warning shows up in Google Webmaster tools when Googlebot finds a large number of urls. The rest of the message reads like this:
"Googlebot encountered extremely large numbers of links on your site. This may indicate a problem with your site's URL structure. Googlebot may unnecessarily be crawling a large number of distinct URLs that point to identical or similar content, or crawling parts of your site that are not intended to be crawled by Googlebot. As a result Googlebot may consume much more bandwidth than necessary, or may be unable to completely index all of the content on your site."
rel canonical should fix this, but apparently it is not
-
Check how you are getting these pages.
Robots.txt is not an ideal solution. If Google finds pages in other places, still these pages will be crawled.
Normally print pages won't have link value and you may no index them.
If there are pages with session ids or campaign codes, use canonical if they have link value. Otherwise no index will be good.
-
the rel canonical with stop you getting duplicate content flags, but there is still a large number of pages its not going to hide them.
I have never seen this warning, how many pages are we talking about?, either it is very very high, or they are confusing the crawler.You may need to no index them
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
-
How long does Google indexes the website after algorithm update?
I've noticed that the page ranks for some queries were improved unexpectedly, without any actions from my side. Is it possible that this improvement is connected with with Google algorithm update Sep, 4-5?
Algorithm Updates | | AurigaPR0 -
Google live blog schema
Live blog markup was rolled out to a selected group of publishers last year 2015. I'm trying to find out whether it has been released to other publishers yet (we are a news site). Not seeing any updates about it anywhere and wondering how I can find out if/when it will be available. This is the latest I can see which is not much help https://developers.google.com/search/pilot/open/live-blogs. Any insider info would be very much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | hjsand2 -
How long for google to de-index old pages on my site?
I launched my redesigned website 4 days ago. I submitted a new site map, as well as submitted it to index in search console (google webmasters). I see that when I google my site, My new open graph settings are coming up correct. Still, a lot of my old site pages are definitely still indexed within google. How long will it take for google to drop off or "de-index" my old pages? Due to the way I restructured my website, a lot of the items are no longer available on my site. This is on purpose. I'm a graphic designer, and with the new change, I removed many old portfolio items, as well as any references to web design since I will no longer offering that service. My site is the following:
Algorithm Updates | | rubennunez
http://studio35design.com0 -
Google Index
Hi all, I just submit my url and linked pages along with xml map to index. How long does it take google to index my new pages?
Algorithm Updates | | businessowner0 -
Number of Items As a Google Ranking Factor??
If I search for "hiking boots" and scan down the SERPs I see the following... Google reports "483 items" for the Zappos.com page. Google reports "Results 1 - 36 of 85" for the Shoebuy.com page (and that does not appear in their code). So, Google is obviously paying attention to the depth of your information or the number of items that you are showing. If they think that is important enough to count and report in the SERPs, might they also be using that information as a ranking factor?? PRACTICAL APPLICATION FOR SEO: If google is using this information, perhaps people should list all of their color, size, etc variants on a single page. For example if you sell widgets in five colors, instead of making one page for each color, list all five on the same page.
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL1 -
Top resulting sites sites for a specific keyword
I'm teaching myself SEO so that I can speak more intelligently to it with my clients. I've spent a great deal of time on seomoz and love it. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know and that brings me to my current question. I can search on a keyword and see results, however I see every URL available. I'm looking for a simple way to see the root domains for the top 100-500 resulting websites for a specific keyword. Is there an easy way to get this information I'm sure it's right in front of me, but I can't find it. Many thanks, ahossom
Algorithm Updates | | ahossom0 -
Is it me or Google?
Hi All, I'm new here so take it easy on me.. OK, basically i have had a SEO company for about 3 years, they did a wonderful job, for the last 12 months or so i have been in top 1-3 positions for pretty much every keyword i wanted... On Jan 17th, that all changed, suddenly google doesnt like something about my site... for the sake of this questions lets focus purely on the keyword "CCTV", i use to be 1st or 2nd, it varied... Since Jan 17th i am all over the place, today alone, i was 9th this morning, then 13th, then 22nd... I am working on a lot of things my SEO company told me to do, with regards my site, obviously this is going to take time... but my big concern is that google doesnt seem to know where to rank me lol, i mean, at least if they settled on a place i.e 22nd, then i have a stable base to work from... Has anyone seen this kind of thing before, and can i expect at somepoint google decides to simply remove me? Any advice welcome. regards James
Algorithm Updates | | isntworkdull0 -
Does Google or Bing use words in the page title beyond the displayed limit for ranking purposes?
Standard good practice for on-page SEO includes keeping page title length below the maximum that Google displays in the SERPs. But words in the title beyond that maximum can be indexed, even if they don't show in the SERPs for end users. For ranking purposes, is there any value in words beyond the character limit in page titles that are truncated in the SERPs?
Algorithm Updates | | KyleJB0