No Index No follow instead of Rel canoncical on product pages

[Storesco]

Hi all,

we handle our product pages no with rel canonical now, we have 1 url that is indexed

http://www.prams.net/cam-combi-family

the other colours have different urls like

http://www.prams.net/cam-combi-family-3-in-1-pram-reversible-seat-car-seat-grey-d

which canonicalize to the indexed page. Google still crawls all those pages.

For crawl budget reasons we want to use "no index, no follow" instead on these pages (the pages for the other colours)? Google would then crawl fewer pages more often?

Does this make sense? Are their any downsides doing it?

Thanks in advance

Dieter

[brianglassman]

Hey Dieter,

I might have considered a more dynamic/interactive solution for showing multiple variations/colors of the same product (gallery/Javascript, etc.). My concern would be as follows: Each time you ask a user to refresh or visit a new page in a purchase funnel, you're increasing the likelihood of a lost opportunity.

If a single-page option is not possible, you are right to look at a noindex or canonical solution.

Personally, I'd recommend the canonical solution. This way, any existing link juice (if any) is being attributed from extraneous to the primary product URL.

Best of luck to you.

-Brian