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        4. Overly-Dynamic URL

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        • dellamoda
          dellamoda last edited by

          Hi,

          We have over 5000 pages showing under

          Overly-Dynamic URL error

          Our ecommerce site uses Ajax and we have several different filters like, Size, Color, Brand and we therefor have many different urls like,

          http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Pumps.html?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

          http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all

          http://www.dellamoda.com/designer-handbags.html?use_selected_filter=Y&option=manufacturer%3A&page3

          Could we use the robots.txt file to disallow these from showing as duplicate content? and do we need to put the whole url in there?

          like:

          Disallow: /*?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y

          if not how far into the url should be disallowed?

          So far we have added the following to our robots,txt

          Disallow: /?sort=title

          Disallow: /?use_selected_filter=Y

          Disallow: /?sort=price

          Disallow: /?clearall=Y

          Just not sure if they are correct.

          Any help would be greatly appreciated.

          Thank you,Kami

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • SebastianCowie
            SebastianCowie last edited by

            Hi Kami,

            It's unfortunate, but a number of modern day e-commerce platforms still suffer from poor canonicalisation and multiple URL's.

            If possible, rather than blocking off access to those queries via robots.txt or meta, I'd start by trying to specify a canonical URL when a query is created.

            E.G

            Query: http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all
            Canonical: http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html

            Failing that I'd try to implement a "follow,noindex" meta tag or via x-robots if you're any good with apache.

            If that's still a no go, then try GWT, Google is getting much better at handling dynamic URL's within e-commerce platforms and you can specify which queries Google should ignore directly within GWT

            There's a great post on Moz that deals with e-commerce and canonicalisation - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/qa-from-ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues-webinar - I'd suggest starting there!

            As a last resort I'd look to block the URL's within robots.txt, but this prevents crawlers from flowing freely within your site and can result in poor indexation.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
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