Findify and Search Engine Optimization

Indexing of Findify collections pages

Since 2015, googlebot can execute javascript files and read DOM. So, when googlebot looking for our collection page, it executes each js file and builds a full page, that it can read and index. Therefore, there is no difference between a static page and a dynamic loading page, googlebot will index them equally.

There had been a few tests done in order to check crawling ability of the googlebot, here is the most important once:

1. Test the search engine’s ability to account for dynamically inserted text when the text is within the HTML source of the page.

2. Test the search engine’s ability to account for dynamically inserted text when the text is outside the HTML source of the page (in an external JavaScript file).

Result: In both cases, the text was crawled and indexed, and the page ranked for the content.

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Articles

Webmaster Central Blog
We Tested How Googlebot Crawls Javascript And Here’s What We Learned
How Does Google Handle Javascript When Crawling, Rendering & Indexing Pages

URL parameters and Findify filters

As you might have noticed, whenever you select any filters in Findify results (be it collections or search), we append the state to the query string (the bold part is the one we're adding: /collections/men?filters%5Bcategory1%5D%5B0%5D%5B0%5D=Men%27s%20Jackets).

This is done for the following reasons:

• it's possible to share such a url (e.g. in the email or support ticket)
• the customer can go back and forward to the same product selection in all scenarios

There are other ways however to achieve the same goal, one of which is to incorporate filtering in the url itself.

We however, do not recommend to follow this route and rely on using canonical tags on the page due to duplicate content.

Duplicate content

When Google indexes your store, it also tracks the url parameters that were applied as a result of filtering or pagination and indexes such pages as well. You can imagine that while doing so, the bot will store multiple pages with almost the same content (including page title, meta description tags and other text on the page), which can harm the ranking of the site.

Our recommendation is to utilize the canonical tags, so that all different filtered variations of the page are treated as one page and all traffic visiting such page is consolidated to one page as well.

What if I want to direct search users to specific filtered category pages?

If you want to direct search traffic to filtered category results (e.g. products under 50$, or products from specific brand), it's much better to create separate pages with unique page content (title, description, etc) and use a separate Findify Smart Collection that is filtered to your needs on it.

Configuring your store to use Canonical URLs

1. Specify Canonical URLs in in the head section of the page
2. (Instruct Google)[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080548?hl=en] how to handle parameters

• On the Dashboard, under Crawl, click URL Parameters.
• Next to the parameter you want, click Edit. (If the parameter isn’t listed, click Add parameter. Note that this tool is case sensitive, so be sure to type your parameter exactly as it appears in your URL.)
• Specify the parameter as “not change content” in Google Webmaster tools. OR make sure that NO URLS are crawled.

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Articles

Why you should use Canonicals
Setting up Canonical tags
Configuring Google crawling