Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help

[Jbake]

Hello,

So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index.  One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs.  This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it.  We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it.  However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed.  Why?  Maybe there's something we're missing here.  Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively.  Has anyone else ran into this problem?

The path we used to implement this action:
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters

Thank you in advance for your help!

[TimHolmes]

That was the link I was going to sugest simply from the title you set this up with.

Have you also canonicalised the page in question so that Google only determines that the parent page is the main source. it may help.

More details on setting it up here - Use Canonical URLs

[EGOL]

I recently posted about this problem here..

In summary, I have three points...

1. The parameters control in Google Webmaster Tools is unreliable.  It did not work for me.  And, it does not work for any other search engine.  Find a different solution, is what I recommend.

2. Using rel=canonical relies on Google to obey it.  From my experience it works well at present time.  But we know that Google says how they are going to do things and then changes their mind without tellin' anybody.   I would not rely on this.

3. If you really want to control these parameters, use htaccess to strip them off at the server level.  That is doing it where you control it and not relying on what anybody says that they are going to do.  Take control.

The only reservation about #3 is that you might need parameters for on-site search or category page sorting on your own site.  These can be excluded from being stripped in your htaccess file.

Don't allow search engines to do anything for you that you can do for yourself.  They can screw it up or quit doing it at any time and not say anything about it.

[Jbake]

Thanks, we have a few thousand parent pages that relate to these 500,000 URLs that have the parameters.  Is there a quick way to canonicalise thousands of pages at once?  It may not be scalable...

[DeanAndrews]

Continuing from EGOL's comment #3 if you do need the parameters for on-site search or categories then another option (admittedly it relies on Google obeying it) is to use the robots.txt and disallow the parameters for example:

Disallow: /*categoryFilter=*

Disallow: /*?utm_

As with any change to that could affect the visibility of your site to the search engines always test first.

[Jbake]

Thanks!  We will probably test this solution.