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Faceted navigation

Faceted navigation is a set of category-page filters, such as price or colour, that narrow the product list and usually give each combination its own address.

How it works

Each filter a shopper picks usually adds a parameter to the address, such as ?color=white&material=porcelain. The combinations multiply, so one category can produce hundreds or thousands of URLs. Google calls this an infinite URL space: its crawlers cannot tell a useless combination from a useful one without fetching it. So they spend crawl budget on filter pages and reach new products later.

The store decides which combinations to keep out of crawling and which to offer as indexable pages. To keep them out, Google suggests a robots.txt disallow rule or putting filters after # in the address, a part Google generally ignores. For filter pages that should be indexed, Google asks for:

  • the standard & separator between parameters;
  • a fixed filter order when filters sit in the path;
  • a 404 status for combinations with no products.

Faceted navigation SEO covers which combinations to index.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop has 40 categories, each with three filters: 8 colours, 5 materials and 4 price bands. Counting pages with one, two or all three filters set, each category has (8 + 1) × (5 + 1) × (4 + 1) − 1 = 269 filtered addresses. Each + 1 is a filter left unset; the − 1 drops the unfiltered page.

Across the shop, that is 40 × 269 = 10,760 addresses for 3,000 products. Multi-select filters and sort orders add more.

Not to be confused with

  • Category page — the unfiltered list that links to every product. Even when filters are blocked, Google suggests keeping product pages and one unfiltered listing crawlable.
  • Product variants — the sizes and colours of one product, each with its own address. A colour filter shows many products, not one product’s variant.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “A canonical URL on filter pages stops Google crawling them.” Right: Google says a canonical pointing to the unfiltered page, like nofollow on filter links, may cut crawling over time. Both work less well in the long term than robots.txt or filters after #.
  • Wrong: “Disallow filters in robots.txt and add noindex as well.” Right: Google never fetches a blocked page, so it never sees the noindex. The URL can still appear in results if other pages link to it.

Sources