How to exclude URL filter searches in robots.txt

[neenor]

When I look through my MOZ reports I can see it's included 'pages' which it shouldn't have included i.e. adding filtering rules such as this one http://www.mydomain.com/brands?color=364&manufacturer=505

How can I exclude all of these filters in the robots.txt? I think it'll be:

Disallow: /*?color=$

Is that the correct syntax with the $ sign in it? Thanks!

[stever999]

Hi

I would recommend excluding these in Google Webmaster Tools. Once logged in to your account under the "Crawl" menu you will find "URL Parameters". Find the relevant parameter in the list on this page and you can tell Google not to index these pages.

Hope this helps.

Steve

[neenor]

I sought out the answer from a developer and got the following reply, so posting here in case it helps someone else:

To exclude pages with color or manufacture in them you can use

Disallow: /*?color=
 Disallow: /?*manufacturer=

A  question mark in your try should be omitted as it denotes the end of the url

[neenor]

It's not Google's index that I'm interested in in this case, it's for the MOZ reports. Moz was including over 10,000 'pages' because it was indexing these URLs. Now I know how to edit the robots.txt Moz will be prevented from indexing them again (we only have around 2,000 real pages, not 10,000)

[Everett]

Hello Adrian,

The Moz reports are meant to help you uncover issues like this. If you're seeing non-canonical URLs in the Moz report then there is a potential issue for Google, Bing and other search engines as well.

Google does respect wildcards (*) in the robots.txt file, though it can easily be done wrong. There is not right or wrong answer to the issue of using filters or faceted navigation, as each circumstance is going to be different. However, I hope some of these articles will help you identify the best approach for your needs:

(Note: Faceted Navigation is not exactly the same as category filters, but the issues and possible solutions are very similar

)Building Faceted Navigation That Doesn't Suck Faceted Navigation Whiteboard Friday
Duplicate Content: Block, Redirect or Canonical
Guide to eCommerce Facets, Filters and Categories
Rel Canonical How To and Why Not
Moz.com Guide to Duplicate Content

I don't know how your store handles these (e.g. does it add the filter automatically, or only when a user selects a filter?) so I can't give you the answer, but I promise if you read those articles above you will have a very good understanding of all of the options so you can choose which is best for you. That might end up being as simple as blocking the filters in your robots.txt file, or you may opt for rel canonical, noindex meta tag, ajax, Google parameter handling, etc...

Good luck!

[neenor]

There certainly is a right answer to my question - I already posted it here earlier today:

Disallow: /*?color=
 Disallow: /?*manufacturer=

Without the $ at the end which would otherwise denote the end of the URL.

[Everett]

Adrian,

I agree that there certainly is a right answer to the question posted, as the question asks specifically about one way to manage the issue, being a block of filters in the robots.txt file. What I was getting at is that this may or may not necessarily be the "best" way, and that I'd need to look at your site and your unique situation to figure our which would be the best solution for your needs.

It is very likely that with these parameters a robots.txt file block is the best approach, assuming the parameters aren't added by default into category page or category pagination page navigational links, as then it would affect the bot's ability to crawl the site. Also, if people are linking to those URLs (highly unlikely though) you may consider a robots meta noindex,follow tag instead so the pagerank could flow to other pages.

And I'm not entirely sure the code you provided above will work if the blocked parameter is the first one in the string (e.g. domain.com/category/?color=red) as there is the additional wildcard between the ? and the parameter. I would advise testing this in Google Webmaster Tools first.

1. On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
2. Under Crawl, click Blocked URLs.
3. If it's not already selected, click the Test robots.txt tab.
4. Copy the content of your robots.txt file, and paste it into the first box.
5. In the URLs box, list the site to test against.
6. In the User-agents list, select the user-agents you want (e.g. Googlebot)

[swissmadesmt]

Yes, but what about bing and rest of Search Engine?

[Everett]

Unless you're specifically calling out Bing or Baidu... in your Robots.txt file they should follow the same directives as Google so testing with Google's Robots.txt file tester should suffice for all of them.