Interactive planner · Free to use
Faceted navigation planner
Separate crawl access, indexing, canonicals, sitemaps and links for ecommerce filter URLs. Export a policy with the evidence you still need.
/tents/2-person200 · self-canonicalA useful range, selection advice and a stable URL.
/tents?color=green&weight=light200 · readable noindexAfter the instruction is processed. The filter still works for shoppers.
A crawler must reach a page to read its noindex instruction.
Alder and all supplied figures are fictional practice material. Apply the reasoning to verified evidence from your own store.
Work through your decision
Build a URL policy
Your selections stay in this browser. Export the result without an account. Changing a selection requires a fresh result.
Start with the job the URL does
A filter can create a useful destination, an interface state, a duplicate order or an invalid combination. Those need different policies. Count neither parameters nor filters as a substitute for customer demand, content value and operational evidence.
Use one run of the planner per URL family. For a real project, save representative examples and their observations alongside the export. The tool does not fetch your store or generate deployable robots.txt rules.
| Example at fictional Alder | Role | Evidence to examine |
|---|---|---|
| /tents/2-person | Curated landing page | Distinct task, useful range, maintained copy and links |
| /tents?color=green&weight=light | Interface filter | Useful controls, little independent landing-page value |
| /tents?sort=price | Potential duplicate order | Equivalent membership, especially across pagination |
| /tents?page=2 | Real pagination | Different products and crawlable onward links |
| /tents?capacity=0 | Invalid combination | Impossible selection, no maintained page purpose |
Six controls, six separate decisions
HTTP status says whether a resource exists. Crawl access controls whether a crawler can request it. Noindex asks that an accessible response be excluded from search. Canonical identifies a preferred equivalent. Sitemaps identify selected canonical destinations. Internal links create discovery routes and help customers move through the store.
Blocking crawling prevents a crawler from reading a new noindex instruction. If an unwanted URL is already indexed, make the removal instruction accessible and verify processing before considering a separate crawl restriction. Even a blocked URL may appear in search if other evidence identifies it.
Canonicalization is a signal for duplicate or very similar pages, not a reliable removal tool for unrelated filtered subsets. Avoid layering incompatible instructions just because each setting is available in a plugin.
Work through the exceptions
Return an actual 404 at an invalid requested filter combination or a page number beyond the end; a friendly screen that still responds 200 can become a soft error. Do not redirect every empty state to the category root.
A deliberately maintained recurring seasonal category has a different purpose. Useful dates, selection advice and appropriate related products can justify keeping its stable URL between seasons. Make that choice based on the page's continuing value, not a rule that all zero-stock pages must disappear.
A real second page is not equivalent to the first. Give each paginated page its own canonical and crawlable links to the next set of products. If sorting changes which items appear on each page, verify equivalence before choosing a canonical target.
Verify the policy after implementation
First test representative allowed, excluded and invalid states in staging. Check the raw response, rendered directives, canonical, generated links and sitemap output. Then repeat against production, with timestamped observations. Compare URL Inspection and verified crawl evidence after processing time.
On Shopify, themes and filtering apps can change link generation. On WooCommerce, themes, permalinks and filtering extensions can change the same controls. Review the actual outputs for your configuration and keep one named owner for the policy.
Sources and maintenance
Check current platform documentation before implementation. Review these instructions when your platform, catalog behavior or source guidance changes.