How to NOINDEX, FOLLOW product attributes links

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you’re facing with the indexing of the attribute links on your website. We understand that it’s important to ensure that Google indexes the correct canonical page and not the attribute links.

To address this issue, you can use Rank Math to set the noindex tag on the attribute links while still allowing Google to crawl and follow them. Here’s how you can do this:

1. In your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Rank Math SEO > Titles & Meta > Misc. Pages.

2. In the Misc. Pages settings, you will find the Noindex Paginated Single Pages option. You can enable this option to set noindex on paginated pages, including the attribute links, in order to prevent them from showing up in the search results.

By enabling this option, you can ensure that the attribute links are set to noindex while still allowing Google to crawl and follow them.

If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please feel free to reach out to our support team, who are always more than happy to help.

Thank you for reaching out, and we hope this solution helps resolve the issue you’re experiencing.

Sources:
Advanced Tab in Rank Math SEO’s Meta Box
How to NoIndex Paginated Pages » Rank Math
Setting Canonical URLs in Rank Math » Rank Math
How to Fix “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math support.

Please try adding this code to your website to programmatically set any page/URL that contains that query parameter to bounded, this would make sure Google does not index those URLs.

Here’s the code to add:

// Get the requested URL
$url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

// Define the forbidden query
$forbidden_query = '?attribute_pa_';

// Check if the URL contains the forbidden query
if (strpos($url, $forbidden_query) !== false) {
  // Set the robots meta to noindex
    unset( $robots['index'] );
    $robots['noindex'] = 'noindex';
  }
  // Return the robots meta
  return $robots;
}

Please add this code to your website and let us know if it works for you.

Thank you!

Hello,

The filter you have added above is not for Rank Math’s meta robots.

Please add this filter instead to change those filtered URLs to noindex and follow:

add_filter( 'rank_math/frontend/robots', function( $robots ) {
	$url = home_url( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] );
	if (strpos($url,'?attribute_pa') !== false)) {
                $robots['index'] = "noindex";
                $robots["follow"] = 'follow';
	        return $robots;
        }
	return $robots;
});

You can add the filter to your theme’s functions.php file or you can follow any of the methods mentioned in the guide below to add this filter to your website:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

Hope that helps.

Hello,

That is normal since the canonical URLs are automatically removed if a page is set to noindex.

Here’s a link for more information:
https://rankmath.com/blog/canonical-urls/#common_canonicalization_issues

Hope that helps.

Thank you.