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
-
Keywords in Paragraphs: How much do they matter at Google?
Hi all, Generally we care a lot about keywords at headings, title tags, URL, etc. always. But I wonder how much impact they have being in paragraphs. How much do they matter at paragraphs? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Search Analytics desktop site to losing page position compared to the mobile version of the site
Looking at Google Search Analytics page position by device. The desktop version has seen a dramatic drop in the last 60 days compared to the mobile site. Could this be caused by mobile first indexing? Has Google had any releases that might have caused this?
Algorithm Updates | | merch_zzounds0 -
If Google Trends Doubles?
If google shows a search trend doubling in a time frame, does that mean the amount of searches doubled? As in: 2006 was ranked at a 50 on trends and the 100 is 2013 and in 2013 10,000 searches were made, does that mean around 5,000 searches were made in 2006?
Algorithm Updates | | JoshBowers20120 -
Canonical URLs being ignored?
Hi Guys, Has anybody noticed canonical URLs being ignored where they were previously obeyed? I have a site that is doing this at the moment and just wondered if this was being seen elsewhere and if anyone knows what the solution is? Thanks, Elias
Algorithm Updates | | A_Q0 -
Getting Listed in Google Places
How do I get listed in Google Places if I don't have a physical address? EG: I am a medical health insurance company in Colo Springs, Colorado, but service 20 cities? What is the best procedure? Getting a mailbox at Mailboxes, etc. or UPS Store?
Algorithm Updates | | GregWalt0 -
How to speed up indexing of my site...
Only 4 out of the 12 pages of my blog/site have been indexed. How can I ensure all the pages get indexed? I'm using a wordpress site, and I also wondered how could I speed the indexing process up (I have submitted a site map) Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | copywritingbuzz0 -
Google Places Rank Replacement
Hi Guys We have recentley done work for a client where they ended up position 1 for their chosen keyword, which was great. Since then there rank has changed and they are now first in google places rank but not on organic search at all, where as before they were on both? Any suggestions on why this may have happened? Not to sure at why google would have replaced the organic rank with the places rank? Cheers Chris
Algorithm Updates | | MiracleCreative0 -
Google's reaction to site updates
Hi, Is it safe to assume as soon as Google indexes updates I've made to my site that any ranking changes the updates effected will happen at that same time, or is there ever a lag time before these changes ( if any ) take effect?
Algorithm Updates | | minutiae0