Google Makes Old Faceted Navigation Doc New Official Guidelines

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Google updated an old document and released it as the official guidelines for managing faceted navigation. The company also warned website owners and SEO professionals to evaluate their faceted navigation and comply with the new guidelines to optimize their site’s crawling and indexing.


Faceted navigation recap
Setting filters, such as size, color, and price, when searching for a product is an example of faceted navigation, also known as guided navigation or faceted search.

Faceted navigation helps e-commerce website visitors quickly navigate and personalize their search, ensuring the end result is the product they`re looking for.

However, while the feature is vital for prospects and sellers, it dominican republic mobile numbers list can also cause crawling and indexing problems for search engines.

Google released its new guidelines to help site owners avoid those challenges.

SEO and the faceted navigation nightmare
Google knows that faceted navigation causes search problems. Each facet (for example, “red T-shirt, size medium, under $20”) creates multiple versions of the original URL.

Google Analyst Gary Illyes mentions this, saying faceted navigation can be an SEO nightmare.

“Faceted navigation is a great way to help users find what they need on your site, but it can create an SEO nightmare if not implemented carefully. Why? Because it can generate a near-infinite number of URLs.”
Gary explained what problems that can cause:

Search engines waste time and crawl budget by over-crawling multiple URLs that don’t provide value to users.
Over-crawling affects the speed at which search engines can discover relevant content users seek.
Google says faceted navigation is the number one cause of crawling issues and is often avoidable.