Google Finally Formalizes Faceted Navigation Guidelines: Why It Matters and How to Adapt

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

If you’ve ever sifted through an e-commerce site looking for the perfect pair of shoes — narrowing it down by size, color, style, and price — you’ve encountered faceted navigation in action. As a consumer, it’s an invaluable tool. But for search engines and SEOs? It’s a headache that’s been lurking in the background for over a decade.

Google’s recent move to formalize its faceted navigation guidelines isn’t groundbreaking — the advice itself has existed since a 2014 blog post — but it does highlight the growing challenges of managing modern websites. And if Google is formalizing these guidelines now, you’d better believe it’s something worth paying attention to.

Let’s break down what this means, why it matters, and how you can implement these changes to save your site from crawling inefficiencies.

A Quick Refresher: What is Faceted Navigation?

Faceted navigation allows users to refine search results by applying filters. If you’re on an e-commerce site, filters for size, color, brand, and price are common examples.

While helpful for users, these filter combinations can create an explosion of unique URLs that search engines must crawl. The math gets messy quickly.