Faceted navigation is the filtering system in e-commerce: colour, brand, price, size. Each filter becomes a URL parameter. Great for UX, hard for SEO.
The problem
4 filters × 5/10/4/5 = 1000 combinations × 50 categories = 50,000 URLs. Each is potentially duplicate content and wastes crawl budget.
Crawl budget
Googlebot spends time on 50,000 filter URLs instead of the main pages.
Duplicate content
The same products appear in different filters. Generic meta descriptions.
Solution 1: Canonical
Each filter URL has a canonical to the main category. Google understands.
Solution 2: noindex
Less effective for crawl budget. Often combined with canonical.
Solution 3: robots.txt
Most radical. Disallow: /*?color=. Risky — you can block important content.
Solution 4: Selective indexing
Index only valuable filters (brand), block the rest.
Parameter order
?color=red&brand=Apple and ?brand=Apple&color=red — duplicates. The server should sort consistently.
Filter page content
If indexed — unique title, description 100-200 words.
Pagination
First page indexed, the rest canonical to the first.
Sayt.uz strategy
Main categories and brand-specific pages (.uz, .com) indexed. Other filters use canonical to the main category.