A fashion client: 500 products but Google crawled 89k URLs – 98% faceted variants. Fix lifted indexed categories 3x.
The Problem
Filters ?size=M&color=red&sort=price generate infinite combos. Bots waste budget, money pages get crawled weekly not daily.
Solution
- Parameter handling: In GSC + robots.txt disallow ?sort=, ?filter= unless SEO-relevant.
- Canonical: Faceted variant canonical to clean category unless it has search demand (e.g., “black dresses under 2000” – keep and optimize).
- Internal links: Only link to SEO-relevant facets, not all combos.
- Sitemap: List only canonical categories + high-demand facets.
- Log analysis: Check Cloudflare logs – if facets >60% hits, fix urgent.
Result
Crawl budget to money pages +210%, category rankings +8 positions avg.