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.
Can using nofollow on magento layered navigation hurt?
-
Howdy Mozzers!
We would like to use no follow, no index on our magento layered navigation pages after any two filters are selected. (We are using single filter pages as landing page, so we would liked them indexed)
Is it ok to use nofollow, noindex on these filter pages? Are there disadvantages of using nofollow on internal pages?
Matt mentioned refraining from using nofollow internally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SAPUx4Beh8
But we would like to conserve crawling bandwidth and PR flow on potentially 100's of thousands of irrelevant/duplicate filter pages.
-
I understand I might be a little late, but I had experienced this issue first hand with a Magento site. Once I added a wildcard exclusion in the robots.txt file my impressions and click improved noticeably.
-
HI,
That is quite a few pages!
If the main issue is crawling related then robots.txt is probably the best way to go, I think the meta tags will still allow the pages to be crawled (they have to be for the tag to be read). Check out the comments in this and this post for wildcard matching in robots.txt which should do what you need. If the pages are indexed then it might be wise to leave a bit of time so that the noindex tags are picked up and then implement the crawl blocking in the robots.txt (and test in GWT to make sure you are not accidentally blocking more then you think). In this case I think you could still leave out the nofollow meta tag but this might just be personal opinion now - I'm not sure if in practice it would make much difference once you have no indexed and blocked crawling!
-
Hi Lynn,
Thank you for your valuable input on the matter. Yes, using meta tags in the header. We are currently submitting filter pages that we want indexed through the site map, so google bot should be able to reach these pages. Also, we are displaying noindex, nofollow tags only on filter pages which have a combination of more than two filters selected as we do not need to go any deeper than that.
I understand your point of using noindex, follow instead of noindex, nofollow to prevent unexpected crawl issues. But on the contrary, don't you think we could conserve crawling bandwidth using noindex, nofollow tags on filter pages that serve no purpose being crawled and probably wont be externally linked to either?
We currently have around 7 filters, some with many values. This can create combinations of more than 500,000 filter pages...
Thanks
-
Hi,
I assume you mean in a meta header tag for these pages? As a general rule I would avoid using nofollow and simply noindex the pages in question. If you are implementing this with a meta tag then the pages will be reached from the layered navigation links anyway so they would then be a dead end for both PR and the crawler - with the potential to cause unexpected crawl problems rather than optimising it.
As long as you are addressing as best you can any duplicate content issues caused by the layered navigation (check out this post for a good rundown on the various solutions) then I would leave the noindex in place and let the crawler follow the links as normal.
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
-
Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?
So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Pagination loading with using AJAX. Should I change this?
Hello, while I was checking this site; http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html I found that the pagination is working this way http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-3 and content is being loaded using AJAX. So, google is not getting the paginated results. Is this a big issue or there is no problem?
Should I create a link for See All Products or there is not a big issue? Thank you!0 -
Mega Menu Navigation Best Practice
First off, I'm a landscape/nature/travel photographer. I mainly sell prints of my work. I'm in the process of redesigning my website, and I'm trying to decide whether to keep the navigation extremely simple or leave the drop-down menu for galleries. Currently, my navigation is something like this: Galleries
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shannmg1
> Gallery for State or Country (example: California)
> Sub-region in State or Country (example: San Francisco)
Blog
Prints
About
Contact Selling prints is the top priority of the website, as that's what runs the business. I have lots of blog content, and I'm starting to build some good travel advice, etc. but in reality, the galleries, which then filter down to individual pages for each photo with a cart system, are the most important. What I'm struggling to decide is whether to leave the sort of "mega menu" for the galleries, or to do away with them, and have the user go to the overall galleries page to navigate further into the site. Leaving the mega menu intact, the galleries page becomes a lot less important, and takes out a step to get to the shopping cart. However, I'm wondering if the amount of galleries in the drop down menu is giving TOO many choices up front as well. I also wonder how changing this will affect search. Any thoughts on which is better or is it really just a matter of preference?0 -
Layered navigation and hiding nav from user agent
I am trying to deal with the duplicate content issues presented by Magento's layered navigation feature (aka faceted navigation). I installed Amasty's Improved Navigation extension (https://amasty.com/improved-layered-navigation.html) and it offers the option to hide the layered navigation from specific user agents (ie googlebot, bingbot, etc). This seems like cloaking to me and I hesitate to try it, unless hiding faceted navigation from specific user agents is known to be acceptable to Google (white hat practice). Does anyone know if this the case?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kyle_M0 -
Should I 'nofollow' links between my own sites?
We have five sites which are largely unrelated but for cross-promotional purpose our company wishes to cross link between all our sites, possibly in the footer. I have warned about potential consequences of cross-linking in this way and certainly don't want our sites to be viewed as some sort of 'link ring' if they all link to one another. Just wondering if linking between sites you own really is that much of an issue and whether we should 'nofollow' the links in order to prevent being slapped with any sort of penalty for cross-linking.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simon_realbuzz0 -
Use of subdomains, subdirectories or both?
Hello, i would like your advice on a dilemma i am facing. I am working a new project that is going to release soon, thats a network of users with personal profiles seperated in categories for example lets say the categories are colors. So let say i am a member and i belong in red color categorie and i got a page where i update my personal information/cv/resume as well as a personal blog thats on that page. So the main site is giving the option to user to search for members by the criteria of color. My first idea is that all users should own a subdomain (and this is how its developed so far) thats easy to use and since the domain name is really small (just 3 letters) i believe subdomain worth since personal site will be easy to remember. My dilemma is should all users own a subdomain, a subdirectory or both and if both witch one should be the canonical? Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites, whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories? What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical? Thanks in advance, C
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HaCos0 -
Canonical & noindex? Use together
For duplicate pages created by the "print" function, seomoz says its better to use noindex (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not) and JohnMu says its better to use canonical http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6c18b666a552585d&hl=en What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1