Overly-Dynamic Urls how to fix in SEOMOZ?

[rasmusbang]

Can you either set rel="nofollow" on the links on the page that changes the sorting, such that moz and google do not check these pages? Or you can set the robots="noindex, follow" on pages which are not the "standard" sort?

[levalencia1]

I am a really newbie to SEO, can you please explain me how to do it?

[rasmusbang]

Sure thing!

For example:

<a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>https://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=desc&order=price" title="Set Descending Direction">src="https://www.theprinterdepo.com/skin/frontend/default/MAG060062/images/i_asc_arrow.gif" alt="Set Descending Direction" class="v-middle" />

This code is the code for reversing the result. So you can check to see if the page has a url query with "dir=asc" (the standard). If so the code above should instead be:
<a rel="nofollow"  <span="">href</a><a rel="nofollow"  <span="">="</a>https://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=desc&order=price" title="Set Descending Direction">src="https://www.theprinterdepo.com/skin/frontend/default/MAG060062/images/i_asc_arrow.gif" alt="Set Descending Direction" class="v-middle" />

However, I believe the best approach will be to change the meta tag for robots for the page.

if the url query is dir=asc, order=price then robots="index, follow". If dir is not asc, and order is not price then robots="noindex, follow".

[levalencia1]

Can I know the syntax for robots.txt to ignore those?

[rasmusbang]

Disallow: /*?dir=desc

Disallow: /*&order=

I think yout should try with these lines, and test in Google Webmaster tools. This should leave only this page

https://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance

That is what you want right?

[KeriMorgret]

Hi! Did Rasmus answer your question, or are you looking for some more help?

[4pm]

Hello there,

I have encounter a similar problem in a similar scenario. If we do not allow this pages to be crawled, wouldn't it reduce the number of pages indexed resulting in lower Google ranking?

[KeriMorgret]

John, having a ton of URLs indexed for the same page will actually dilute things, not help your rankings. Dr. Pete wrote a great post at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world explaining duplicate content that should help give you a better understanding of things.

[dellamoda]

Hi, We sort of have the same issue, We have over 5000 pages with the same issues actually. Our ecommerce site uses several different filter (Using Ajax) and we have many different urls like,

http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Pumps.html?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all

http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

Could we use the robots.txt file to disallow these as well? and do we need to put the whole url in there?

like:

Disallow: /*?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

if not how far into the url should be disallowed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, Tony

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Kami,

You might want to ask this in a new post. New posts on old threads don't bump a post in the Q&A forums, so not too many people will see this post (I only knew about it as I was notified from having subscribed last year).