A large catalogue generates thousands of near-identical addresses on its own: the same selection of products, just in a different order, on a different page, or with a filter applied. Hand those to a search engine as they are and it spends its time on noise, splits ranking weight between duplicates, and may push your genuinely important pages down.
The catalogue SEO configurator is a single screen that sets one set of rules for every service page of the storefront: what to index, what to hide, and which address counts as the main one.
Changing nothing is also a valid strategy
The defaults already follow SEO canon, and most stores never need to touch them:
| Setting | Default | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Facet combinations: robots | noindex, follow | Filter combinations stay out of the index, but the crawler still follows links onward |
| Facet combinations: canonical | self | Consistent with noindex |
| Sorting: robots | index | The canonical already folds the variants back onto the base page |
| Sorting: canonical | unsorted page | The page number is preserved |
| noindex pagination after page № | 0 (never) | Every pagination page is indexed on its own |
| Hide category description | all three on | So the same text is not duplicated across pagination, sorting and facets |
| Title suffixes | on | Clearer browser tabs and snippets |
| Trailing slash | off | One canonical address form |
| Nested paths | off | Flat addresses survive moving items between categories |
Open this screen when there is a concrete reason: a duplicate warning in Search Console, crawl budget burned on filter combinations, or an SEO campaign that needs the rules adjusted.
What exactly you control
Facets, sorting, pagination
For facet combinations and sorted pages you set two things: whether the page may enter the index (robots) and which address it treats as the main one (canonical). For pagination you set the page number after which pages drop out of the index; zero means never.
Category description
Three separate switches: hide the intro text on pagination, on sorted pages and on facet pages. The point is to stop one description from repeating across dozens of addresses.
Page titles
Suffixes can be appended to the title using placeholders:{page}for the page number and{sort_label}for the sort name. This is what a human sees in the browser tab and in the snippet.
Variant combination pages
A separate group for stores with variants (colour, size):
- Canonical of a combination page — to the product, or to itself.
- Robots of a combination page — available to search or not.
- Title suffix format — «colour: red, size: L» versus «Red, L».
- 301 from old combination addresses — so renaming does not produce 404s.
- Do not create URLs for variants — all combinations live on a single product address. Applies to every product in the store at once.
Worth knowing the honest context here: Google has no official position on canonicals for variant pages, and its own documentation contradicts itself — the ecommerce section advises pointing at the product, while the section on variant structured data for multi-page setups requires self. On top of that, a canonical is a hint, not a directive, and search may ignore it precisely because the pages differ in price and availability. So the «to the product» default is a choice in favour of a cleaner index, not the one correct answer.
Address format
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Category, product, brand and news prefixes | The leading segment of the address. An empty prefix means no segment at all |
| URL suffix | An extension at the end, for example.html. Placed after the pagination part |
| Trailing slash | So that an address with and without a slash are never two different pages |
| Nested category paths | Category addressed by its full ancestor line instead of a flat address |
| Nested product paths | Product under its category path. Independent of the category switch |
Changing the address format changes every URL in the catalogue. The store remembers previous prefixes and suffix, so old addresses answer with a 301 to the new ones — but it is still a large change, and one to make deliberately rather than out of curiosity.
Language in the address
You set which language opens without a prefix (/category/…), with the rest carrying one (/en/…). A separate switch decides whether the main language gets a prefix as well.
Linking from specifications
A filterable attribute value in the «Specifications» block can become a link to the same category with that filter applied. This gives you internal linking — but if your facets are under noindex and you would rather not pass weight to them, the switch can be turned off.
Where to start if you are unsure
- Do not touch anything until there is a symptom. The defaults work.
- Once a Search Console warning appears, identify which page type caused it: facet, sorting or pagination. Each has its own pair of fields.
- Decide the address format (prefixes, suffix, slash, nesting) once, ideally before launch. It is the most expensive change on this screen.