Opening post by ShopSearch
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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