Can I safely block my product listing from search? Does it even make sense?
-
Hi,
I've an ecommerce website with more than 50k urls and only 10% or so are getting crawled regularly by Google.
Product listing pages represent roughly 80% of these 50k pages.Trying to improve this, I was thinking to remove altogether all (most?) of my product listing from search (via Robot.txt) to keep only the product pages themselves and the product categories.
My organic situation since Jan 2019:
Users: 2,300,000 (of which 9% are visiting product listing pages)
Page views: 8,000,000 (of which 5% are product listing pages).Am I about to unleash armageddon (or more like harakiri) on my website by doing so or actually get Google to crawl much more relevant resources (product pages, product categories, blog content and so on)?
Thanks,
G -
Have had a lot of success with that kind of deeper logic in the past, you can usually quite easily create such rules using robots.txt wildcards
-
Thanks for your answer and the link, that's actually very useful.
What I mainly struggle with is to understand what I can prune/not and based on what criterias. And the article you've linked is helping a fair bit on that aspect.I'm thinking to start on multiple filter pages with a rule such as "block product listing pages from being indexed if at least 2 filters have been selected". And then see how it impacts the site and my crawl budget.
-
Hello GhillC,
I think we need to agree on terminology first, but it sounds like you can safely limit some of Google's access. Some people call your "product listing pages" either "refinements", "facets", or "filters". When I read "product listing pages" I typically think of what is also called a "category" page, which is a page listing multiple products. A single product page is often referred to as a product detail page (PDP).
Now that we're on the same page (pun intended), let me know if this article answers your question. It is very dated (2011) but gets the point across, which is that you need to be strategic about which facets/refinements/filters you allow to be crawled and/or indexed: https://moz.com/blog/building-faceted-navigation-that-doesnt-suck .
One more thing: 5% - 9% of traffic going directly from organic search into a page type would be considered significant for most businesses. When I look at pruning out page types, they're typically responsible for less than 0.5% of traffic from organic search.
-
A product page is a page speaking about a selected product.
Example: a page about the smartphone Samguns Supernova 30A product category is a page speaking about the category, or the type of product it falls into.
Example: smartphone or, if it is too broad, the Supernova lineA product listing is a page listing all the product refined with available criterias such as a product line.
Example: a page listing all the Samguns Supernova phones
Or a page listing all the Samguns Supernova phones with more than 128GB of HD.
Etc.Does it make more sense?
-
Can you explain the difference between the 'products listings' and the 'actual products themselves'?
You say you still want products and product categories to rank, but not product listings. But to most readers, a product listing is usually a product category or product page (so the info seems to contradict itself, which actually it may not do - just needs more explaining)
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
-
Google Search Console Not Sending Messages
One of our sites received a Manual Penalty for unnatural links by Google. However, we never received a message in Google Search Console or an email about the manual action. The only reason we knew about the penalty is by the obvious drop in rankings, then signing into search console to look for any manual actions, which we found. Since then, we have submitted a disavow file and a reconsideration request. However, once again we did not receive an email or message in search console that shows confirmation of the disavow or that they received the reconsideration request. The disavow file does show up after I upload it, and it says it was successfully uploaded... but no messages or emails. After many hours of investigating the various canonical versions of our website on Search Console, we found out that there were several “owners” of the various canonical versions of our site that had “could not find the email address” as a site owner. We found out that these were previous employees who no longer worked with the company and their email address was deleted. After unverifying these site owners, (all the ones that had “could not find the email address” as the site owner), the notifications, emails and messages in Search Console started to appear. However, the only place they did not appear, is the main canonical version of our site. Of course, the main canonical version of our site (https://www) is the version that we uploaded the disavow and reconsideration request. This is the canonical version of the site that we need to receive these messages to know if our reconsideration request was granted! We’ve just reuploaded the disavow file and reconsideration request to all of the other canonical versions (2 of the 3 received the message about the penalty)…. and we are currently awaiting a response. Has anybody else had problems with not receiving notifications in search console due to deleted email addresses?
Technical SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
Webmaster tools not showing links but Moz OSE is showing links. Why can't I see them in the Google Search Console
Hi, Please see attached photos. I have a website that shows external follow links when performing a search on open site explorer. However, they are not recognised or visible in search console. This is the case for both internal and external links. The internal links are 'no follow' which I am getting developer to rectify. Any ideas why I cant see the 'follow' external links? Thanks in advance to those who help me out. Jesse T7dkL5s T7dkL5s OkQmPL4 3qILHqS
Technical SEO | | jessew0 -
How can i Get this google meta description?
How can i Get the google meta description that has the website Ke Adventure ? https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=ke+adventure I mean with the link of the website section below the SEO TITLE tx
Technical SEO | | tourtravel0 -
Site not coming up even when I search with the .com
We have a customer whose site: http://camilojosevergara.com doesn't show up even when you search for his exact domain. http://bit.ly/18RjPPX Wondering why that is. Is it because wikipedia and the other links rank higher? I've submitted his sitemap to google so I'm trying to figure out why its not showing up. Any tips/recommendations to fix this would be greatly appreciated. thanks
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
Making URLs automatically clickable
Hi all, I have a PHP function which i use to make all links clickable. Problem is, if some one writes a link in a a-tag, the URL inside the href value is made clickable. Not good. Can someone perhaps help me with the issue? Function: function makeClickableLinks($text)
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang
{
$text = preg_replace('/<//', ' $text = preg_replace('(
)', '
', $text);
$text = preg_replace('!((https?://www.|https?://|www.)(([a-z0-9-]+.)+[a-z]{2,6})(/\S+|/)*)!ie', '"[".shortenurl("\1")."]("".(strtolower('$2'))"', $text);
$text = str_replace('( <a href',="" '<a="" $text);<br="">$text = str_replace(')" target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace('):" target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace(')..." target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace(').." target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace(')." target', '" target', $text);
return $text;
}</a> <a href',="" '<a="" $text);<br="">Pleeeeease heeelp 🙂 Can't fix it on my own - been at it for ages. -Rasmus</a>0 -
Verification problem with Google Local + Listing
Our company has more than 250+ clients, so I need to open around 250 Gmail account for Google Local + (old Google Places), so for around 250 gmail account I need to verify 250 times the mails with phone. I wanted to know, can I open Google Places with a clients domain mail, example: places@client-domain.com instead of client@gmail.com
Technical SEO | | cvissi0 -
How can I improve my google places ranking?
I am currently registered with google places for 'video conferencing in Melbourne australia' however I don't show up on page 1 of the places sesrch results for this search term. How can I improve it. I do note that my office address is in a residential area and not Melbourne CBD. Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | dantmurphy0