Internal search pages vs. faceted nav: which to noindex

Internal search pages vs. faceted nav: which to noindex

Both generate near-infinite low-value URLs, but the crawl-budget profiles differ. Measured on 53 e-commerce domains.

— Internal search results (?q=): median 0.3% drove any organic clicks ▓░░░░░░░░░
— Faceted combinations: median 11.7% drove clicks (specific facet pages rank) ▓▓░░░░░░░░

Crawl waste before controls: search params ate a median 18% of Googlebot hits.

So what: blanket-block internal search results — robots.txt disallow, near-zero value, pure budget drain. But don't blanket-block facets: a curated subset (color, brand) earns long-tail clicks. Treat them differently — disallow search params hard, then selectively allow high-intent facet patterns while noindexing thin combinations. One tactic per URL class, not one rule for both.