Google: Fix These 2 URL Errors to Solve 75% of Crawling Issues
▼ Summary
– Google’s 2025 year-end report identified faceted navigation and action parameters as the biggest crawling and indexing challenges, accounting for 75% of problems.
– Faceted navigation, common on ecommerce sites, creates near-infinite URL combinations through filters and was responsible for 50% of the issues.
– Action parameters, which trigger actions without meaningfully changing content, and irrelevant tracking parameters caused 25% and 10% of the issues respectively.
– These crawling problems can slow websites to a halt, overload servers, and cause significant recovery delays if bots get stuck in infinite loops.
– Maintaining a clean URL structure without these bot traps is essential for server health, fast page loads, and clear canonical URLs for search engines.
A clean and efficient website structure is fundamental for both user experience and search engine visibility. According to a recent discussion by Google’s Gary Illyes, the vast majority of crawling challenges faced by search engines stem from just two primary technical issues. Addressing these problems can resolve approximately three-quarters of the difficulties that prevent Googlebot from properly accessing and indexing site content, which is crucial for maintaining strong organic search performance.
The insights come from an analysis of Google’s year-end report on crawling and indexing. Illyes noted that when a search engine bot encounters a problematic set of URLs, it often cannot determine the quality of that URL space without first crawling a significant portion of it. By the time this assessment is made, the damage is frequently already done, potentially overloading servers and slowing sites to a frustrating halt. This scenario, often described as a bot getting stuck in an infinite loop, can take considerable time and effort to recover from.
The data highlights two major culprits. The first, accounting for roughly half of all reported issues, is faceted navigation. This is especially prevalent on ecommerce platforms where filters for attributes like size, color, and price generate a near-endless array of URL combinations. Each filter combination can create a unique URL, leading to a massive, often duplicate, URL space that search engines waste resources crawling without discovering substantial new content.
The second major issue, responsible for about a quarter of crawling problems, involves action parameters. These are URL parameters that trigger a specific action on the server, such as adding an item to a cart or changing a user preference, without meaningfully altering the core content of the page presented to the user. From a search engine’s perspective, these URLs often appear to be distinct pages, but they lead to the same or very similar content, creating confusion and inefficiency.
Beyond these two primary areas, other contributors exist. Around ten percent of issues arise from irrelevant parameters like session IDs or UTM tracking tags appended to URLs. Another five percent stem from plugins or widgets that generate convoluted or problematic URLs. A final small percentage is attributed to miscellaneous “weird stuff,” including edge cases like double-encoded URLs.
The core takeaway is that a streamlined URL architecture free of these common traps is not merely a technical best practice; it is a business imperative. It ensures server resources are used effectively, supports faster page load times for visitors, and provides search engines with a clear map of a site’s valuable content. By proactively managing faceted navigation and action parameters, webmasters can prevent the majority of crawling obstacles, safeguarding their site’s health and its potential to rank well in search results.
(Source: Search Engine Land)
