Definition
Faceted navigation is a filtering system on e-commerce sites allowing users to refine category results by different criteria: size, color, price, brand, rating, etc. While it improves user experience, it poses considerable SEO challenges because each filter combination can generate a unique URL, potentially creating thousands of low-value pages, duplicate content, and crawl budget dilution. SEO management of facets involves deciding which filter combinations should be indexed (those matching real search queries), which should be noindexed or canonicalized, and how to structure URLs to avoid combinatorial explosion.
Key Points
- Each filter combination can generate a unique URL
- Only combinations matching real queries should be indexed
- Solutions include noindex, canonical, AJAX without URL change, and robots.txt
Practical Examples
Unmanaged page explosion
A fashion site with 10 categories, 20 sizes, 15 colors, and 30 brands potentially generates 90,000 URL combinations. Without management, Google attempts to crawl all these pages, diluting crawl budget and creating massive duplicate content.
Strategic facet management
A shoe site decides to index 'category + brand' combinations (e.g., 'Nike sneakers') and 'category + gender' because they match user queries, while noindexing size and color combinations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Identify filter combinations matching real queries (e.g., 'black Nike shoes') and index them with clean URLs. For others, use canonicals to the parent category, noindex, or load filters via AJAX without changing the URL. Block useless combinations in robots.txt.
For indexed facets (targeting queries), use clean, readable URLs (e.g., /shoes/nike/). For non-indexed facets, URL parameters (?color=black&size=42) filtered by canonical or noindex are acceptable.
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Last updated: 2026-02-07