Google Webmaster Tools Url Parameters & Magento Filter URLs

Question

I am utilizing product attributes within Magento. I am also allowing using to filter via these attributes, this then generates new URLs.

In Google webmaster tools under URL Parameters I have alot of parameters such as

• SID
• ___store
• size
• material
• brand
• limit
• productId
• is_redirect
• q
• order
• dir

These generate alot of URLs. As they are all filtered versions of the 'default' pages all information would be indexed and therefore the above pages are creating replica's. Therefore I believe i should disallow crawl?

Also the one i am not sure on is whether I should allow index on Q (search parameter).

Answer 1

Most Magento stores would set all of those example URL parameters you've provided to No URL's from Google WMT.

Whether you want the results of search queries carried out on your website indexed in Google is entirely up to you though and depends on the nature of your website. If the search results will likely conflict (in terms of keyword cannibalisation) with your main category/product pages then it would be best to prevent these from being indexed and setting to No URL's too.

You may find this useful.