Myth: nofollow your facet links to save crawl budget

Myth: nofollow your facet links to save crawl budget

'Q: I added rel=nofollow to all my filter links to stop Google crawling them. Smart, right?'

Short answer: No — since 2019 nofollow is a hint, and Google may crawl those links anyway.

The longer version: nofollow used to reliably block link-following, so the "nofollow your facets" trick worked. Google changed it to a hint for ranking and crawling — meaning it can still discover and crawl nofollowed URLs if it finds them worthwhile or links to them elsewhere. So nofollow no longer guarantees crawl control on facets. Plus it can interrupt PageRank flow to pages you do want crawled.

For real facet control, the heavier tools work better: robots.txt disallow on the parameter pattern, or rendering filters in a way crawlers don't see as unique URLs (POST requests, or JavaScript that doesn't change the URL).

Rule of thumb: nofollow is a suggestion now. For crawl control, use robots.txt or change the URL structure.

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