GWT, Editing URL Parameters for Ecommerce Features

[nat88han]

I have had the setting of "let googlebot decide" on managing my URL parameters on an Ecommerce site in Magento.  The products I sell come in different sizes and colors and finishes etc.

These parameters are showing up in Google Webmaster Tools and set for "let googlebot decide". Some of them have as many as 8 million urls monitored.

I changed the editing option to clam these parameters as "narrow searches", but still left the option to "let googlebot decide" (versus block urls).

Will blocking these erroneous urls serve any benefit?  Does blocking these help with the crawl/seo?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I wouldn't block these pages so long as you have your parameters set up in Google Webmaster Tools, as well as indicated paginated content.

Remember, there are opportunities with canonical tags as well, so again, I see no reason to block these pages.

As long as you take proper steps to avoid duplicate content and let engines know what is happening, you should be fine.

Hope this helps, this is just my opinion - good luck!

[Richard-Kitmondo]

Hi Nathan,

I tend to agree with Patrick, but if you aren't seeing any issues with SERP rankings then you may not wish to go changing anything.

If you plan to go ahead, here are my thoughts.

Don't go blocking the pages rather look into canonical tags, I asked a similar question yesterday and was pointed to some articles that proved useful.

Moz's guide on Canonicalization would be my first go to.

Plus there is always the Google guide on duplicate content which I would imagine you have already looked at - But just in case that's here.

If it's a case of TL;DR - There is little damage that can be done with correctly set up canonical tags, so get in touch with your web developer or hit the research harder and just set them up wither way. Adding the Canonical tags will do no harm and help rule out any duplicate content concerns.

Hope that helps,

Richard

[Carson-Ward]

Magento will generally canonicalize correctly by default. What I'm guessing you're seeing are category pages that have variables for faceted navigation - again, a pretty common issue in Magento. I've seen and even "fixed" this issue for past clients with no noticeable results.

If you ARE having problems getting your pages into Google's index (check indexation status in Webmaster tools and look for exact product/category URLs to check) there is a plugin that will remove the variables for faceted navigation on category pages. The main downside is that someone who emials/shares a link will not share it with the filters/sorting attached.

Generally I recommend leaving it alone. If you're not having indexation problems, though, it should be fine to leave alone and let Google figure it out.