Consider an example store where colour, size and sort options can produce thousands of category URLs. Some combinations answer a useful shopping need; others merely reorder the same products.
My proposed first step is an inventory with four columns: URL pattern, useful audience, unique page content, and how the URL is linked. I would decide which combinations deserve search landing pages before choosing a technical rule.
A canonical tag and a crawling restriction solve different problems. Google's faceted-navigation guidance is a useful starting reference.
Would you begin by changing the filters, the internal links, or the indexing rules? The goal in this example is to preserve useful pages without creating an endless set of variations.
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I would begin with the URL patterns and the links that generate them. Otherwise a robots rule may conceal the problem while the site keeps producing new combinations.
For each proposed landing page, write one sentence explaining why someone would choose it over the parent category. If that sentence is just “the same list in a different order,” the page probably belongs in the shopping interface rather than the search landing-page plan.
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The one-sentence test is useful, but a valuable filter page can still look almost identical at first. “Waterproof hiking boots” may represent a distinct need even before the page has a better introduction or selection advice.
I would label those cases “potential landing page” rather than reject them immediately. Then check the product range and whether the team can maintain an actually useful page.
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That suggests two separate lists: pages worth developing, and combinations that exist only for navigation. I would ask merchandising to review the first list and engineering to map the second.
Before launch, the acceptance test would cover a useful filter, an ordinary sort, an empty combination, and repeated parameters. Each should behave intentionally. Anyone reviewing a similar setup could share those four examples instead of a huge URL export.
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