Google’s Advice on Fixing Unwanted Indexed URLs via @sejournal, @martinibuster

An SEO posted details astir a tract audit successful which helium critiqued the usage of a rel=canonical for controlling what pages are indexed connected a site. The SEO projected utilizing noindex to get the pages dropped from Google’s scale and past adding the idiosyncratic URLs to robots.txt. Google’s John Mueller suggested a solution that goes successful a antithetic direction.

Site Audit Reveals Indexed Add To Cart URLs

An SEO audit uncovered that implicit fractional of the client’s 1.43k indexed pages were paginated and “add to buying cart” URLs (the benignant with question marks astatine the extremity of them). Google ignored the rel=canonical nexus attributes and indexed the pages, which illustrated the constituent that rel=canonical is conscionable a hint and not a directive. Paginated successful this lawsuit conscionable means the dynamically generated URLs related to erstwhile a tract visitant orders a leafage by marque oregon size oregon immoderate (this is usually referred to arsenic faceted navigation).

The adhd to buying cart URLs  looked similar this:

The lawsuit had implemented a rel=canonical nexus property to archer Google that different URL was the close URL to index.

The SEO’s solution:

“How I program connected fixing this is to no-index each these pages and erstwhile that’s done artifact them successful the robots.txt”

SEO Decisions Depend On Details

One of the astir bushed and boring SEO dada jokes is “it depends.” But saying “it depends” is nary gag erstwhile it’s followed by what thing depends connected and that’s the important item that John Mueller added to a LinkedIn treatment that already had 83 responses to it.

The archetypal discussion, by an SEO who’d conscionable finished an audit, addresses the method challenges associated with controlling what gets crawled and indexed by Google and wherefore rel=canonical is not an unreliable solution due to the fact that it is simply a proposition and not a directive.

A directive is simply a bid that Google is obligated to follow, similar a meta noindex rule. A rel=canonical nexus property is not a directive, it’s treated arsenic a hint for Google to usage for deciding what to index.

The occupation that the archetypal station described was astir managing a precocious fig of dynamically generated posts that were slipping into Google’s index.

John Mueller On Dealing With Unwanted Indexed URLs

Mueller’s instrumentality connected the occupation was to suggest the value of reviewing the URLs for patterns that whitethorn springiness a hint arsenic to wherefore unwanted URLs are getting indexed and past applying a much granular (specific) solution.

He advised:

“You look to person a batch of comments present already, truthful my 2 cents are much arsenic a random bystander…

– I’d reappraisal the URLs for patterns and look astatine specifics, alternatively than to dainty this arsenic a random database of URLs that you privation canonicalized. These are not random, utilizing a generic solution won’t beryllium optimal for immoderate tract – ideally you’d bash thing circumstantial for this peculiar situation. Aka “it depends”.

– In particular, you look to person a batch of ‘add to cart’ URLs – you tin conscionable artifact these with the URL signifier via robots.txt. You don’t request to canonicalize them, they should ideally not beryllium crawled during a mean crawl (it messes up your metrics too).

– There’s immoderate magnitude of pagination, filtering successful URL parameters excessively – cheque retired our documentation connected options for that.

– For much method rabbit holes, cheque retired https://search-off-the-record.libsyn.com/handling-dupes-same-same-or-different “

Why Was Google Indexing URLs With Query Parameters?

A taxable raised by aggregate radical successful the LinkedIn treatment is the occupation of Google indexing buying cart URLs (add to buying cart URLs). No answers were provided but it whitethorn beryllium thing peculiar to the buying cart level and solving that whitethorn beryllium constricted to the supra described solutions.

Read John Mueller’s proposal here.