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I am getting around 2,500 type 500 URL errors in Google webmaster tools. These pages are faceted navigation results that can not be reached by a site visitor. These pages do not exist. We are using faceted navigation with the Volusion platform (asp.net, I think).

I have specified URL parameters in webmaster tools so that Google will not try to index anything faceted. This does not stop the errors from generating.

I am concerned about how this might effect SEO (bleeding page rank).

I can provide additional information if needed. I am not sure how to solve this. I have started down the path of creating 301's, but having some difficulty there as well.

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Have you tried adding the paths to your Robots.txt so that GoogleBot and others don't attempt to crawl them?

I've noticed that GoogleBot in particular is very "good" at finding what it thinks are paths and links in script string literals and attempting to follow them - which can lead to exactly this sort of behaviour.

If there's nothing legitimate about them as paths, tell the bots that.

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Hah!. Yes, I can do this. I can "fix" these with 301's, or with robot.txt Ideally, there should be a programing solution. Which is better, the 301, or the robot.txt? I am thinking the 301 as it "stops" the loss of page rank? – user19007 Oct 10 '12 at 23:23
If they aren't pages that should be crawled, then a robots.txt would probably be cleaner - remember that you can use wildcards to remove whole patterns (folders, etc.) rather than individual listings. If however there's a valid page that the bot should be going to then yes, some code based solution might be better - we'd need more info on the server/platform your site is on - this sort of thing should be fairly easy to pattern match. – Zhaph - Ben Duguid Oct 11 '12 at 20:19

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