Techniques to fix eCommerce faceted navigation
-
Hi everyone,
I've read a lot about different techniques to fix duplicate content problems caused by eCommerce faceted navigation (e.g. redundant URL combinations of colors, sizes, etc.). From what I've seen suggested methods include using AJAX or JavaScript to make the links functional for users only and prevent bots from crawling through them.
I was wondering if this technique would work instead?
If we detect that the user is a robot, instead of displaying a link, we simply display its anchor text.
So what would be for a human
COLOR
< li > < a href = red >red < /a > < /li >
< li > < a href = blue>blue < /a > < /li >Would be for a robot
COLOR
< li > red < /li >
< li > blue < /li >Any reason I shouldn't do this?
Thanks!
*** edit
Another reason to fix this is crawl budget since robots can waste their time going through every possible combination of facet. This is also something I'm looking to fix.
-
I share Alan's hesitation - it could look like cloaking, especially if a bot is making the call. If the pages aren't indexed yet, you could just "nofollow" the links - it sends the same signal transparently.
Home Depot is probably pulling it off with the AJAX/JS implementation, which is a bit harder for Google to parse. They also have a massive authority and link profile, so they can always squeak the small stuff by. You might not be so lucky. In general, it's best to stick to the standard practices and not get too tricky.
-
I've been browsing sites looking at what the big players are doing
Homedepot.com seems to be doing exactly this; if you go to
And you click a facet to narrow the result, the page is refreshed via AJAX
If you go to the same page with a Googlebot user agent, even with JavaScript enabled, clicking the checkbox does nothing!
Is this cloaking? Why is this legit?
-
But is it really cloaking? We wouldn't be showing different content. Just disabling links. This article describes a technique that's more akin to cloaking and justifies it because of "intent": http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/dealing-with-faceted-navigation-a-case-study.
The problem with canonical is that the robots will still waste crawl budget going through all the combinations of facets we have. We have hundreds of categories with complex products with 10+ facets with 10+ options each...
-
That would be cloaking, best not do that
A canonical tag would be best, thats what they are for
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
-
Minimum amount of content for Ecommerce pages?
Hi Guys, Currently optimizing my e-commerce store which currently has around 100 words of content on average for each category page. Based on this study by Backlinko the more content the better: http://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/02_Content-Total-Word-Count_line.png Would you say this is true for e-commerce pages, for example, a page like this: http://www.theiconic.com.au/yoga-pants/ What benefits would you receive with adding more content? Is it basically more content, leads to more potential long-tail opportunity and more organic traffic? Assuming the content is solid and not built just for SEO reasons. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
AMP pages for a responsive Ecommerce website?
Howdy guys, I'm wondering if AMP is worthwhile intergrating into a responsive e-commerce site? I'm under the impression that the benefits of AMP would be focused around speed, however it may come at the cost of conversion rate if it was to be delivered for product pages, etc. I'm presuming that even if AMP was on every page across a responsive ecommerce site, Google would only display AMP pages in the carousel for news articles, such as on the integrated blog? Any advice would be awesome! Thanks guys 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAR8970 -
Ecommerce Tabs
This isn't a unique problem but an e-commerce client has product information on a page, with separate tabs that have been historically loaded with a new page, which have been indexed. Product (/product): 8,450 Results Content1 (/product?tab=content1): 966 results Content2 (/product?tab=content2): 683 Results Content3 (/product?tab=content3): 1,750 Results Content4 (/product?tab=content4): 1,500 Results All of the content shares a common product top section (summary of information) but has unique canonical url definitions, meta information, etc. The individual content tabs are all part of a larger grouping, which is why their index level is considerably less than the actual product page. As the client grows and updates this historical practice, one of the implementation options is making the content available on the page via an Ajax load. The desire would be to maintain the ability to search for content1, content2, etc at that level and not spread the juice throughout all the main product pages. My question is what would the best setup be to maintain the historical ability to target the content individually via Search, while updating the UI/UX for a better customer experience? If the ajax route is the way to go, what are all the tasks necessary to properly handle without creating a separate duplicate pathing? Some of the tasks that I've outlined would be Using pushState to update the url when the tab is changed Is there an ability to also update canonicals & meta information? what else am I missing? Any guidance would be great as Id love to get some thoguhts on the matter. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemarieReed0 -
How to fully index big ecommerce websites (that have deep catalog hierarchy)?
When building very large ecommerce sites, the catalog data can have millions of product SKUs and a massive quantity of hierarchical navigation layers (say 7-10) to get to those SKUs. On such sites, it can be difficult to get them to index substantially. The issue doesn’t appear to be product page content issues. The concern is around the ‘intermediate’ pages -- the many navigation layers between the home page and the product pages that are necessary for a user to funnel down and find the desired product. There are a lot of these intermediate pages and they commonly contain just a few menu links and thin/no content. (It's tough to put fresh-unique-quality content on all the intermediate pages that serve the purpose of helping the user navigate a big catalog.) We've played with NO INDEX, FOLLOW on these pages. But structurally it seems like a site with a lot of intermediate pages containing thin content can result in issues such as shallow site indexing, weak page rank, crawl budget issues, etc. Any creative suggestions on how to tackle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AltosDigital-10 -
Best practices for structuring an ecommerce site
I'm revamping my wife's ecommerce site. It is currently a very low traffic website that is not indexed very well in Google. So, my plan is to restructure it based upon the best practices that helps me avoid duplicate content penalties, and easier to index strategies. The store has about 7 types of products. Each product has approximately 30 different size variations that are sometimes specifically searched for. For example: 20x10x1 air filters, 20x10x2 air filters, 20x10x1 allergy reducing air filters, etc So, is it best for me to create 7 different products with 30 different size variations (size selector at the product level that changes the price) or is it better to create 210 different product pages, one for each style/size?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pherbio0 -
Best way to implement canonical tags on an ecommerce site with many filter options?
What would be the best way to add canonical tags to an ecommerce site with many filter options, for example, http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com? Should I include a canonical tag for all filter options under a category even though the pages don't have the same content? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Changing URLs to include a fixed identifier or ID
The Scenario: I got pages that I need to track, located in a domain, within several folders. Adding a common identifier or ID (eg. www.domain.com/folder/page-name-identifier.html) in those URL's will ease my work so I would be able to select, in Anlx, all traffic including URL's with that specific identifier. URL's for which track is needed lack this identifier today. My Plan: add identifier (7 letters fixed and common for all URLs) to those existing pages and 301 redirect from old to new URL's My Question: will this change of URL's and redirections SEO-hurt me in anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
Internal Search / Faceted Navigation
Hi there, I'm working on an e-learning site with the following content pages: main page, category pages, course pages, author pages, tag pages. We will also have an internal search for users to search by keyword for courses & authors & categories. Is it still recommend to "noindex, follow" and disallow in robots.txt internal search results? Or for a site like this, is it better to use faceted navigation? It seems that faceted navigation is mostly for e-commerce sites. What is the latest thinking on SEO best practices for internal search result pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0