Our online store generates separate URLs for combinations of size, colour, and sort order. Some useful category pages bring in search traffic, but thousands of filtered combinations have also been indexed.
I want to keep the main categories searchable without having Google spend so much time crawling minor variations.
Where I am unsure
One suggestion is to block these parameter patterns in robots.txt. Another is to leave them crawlable and add a noindex directive. If I do both, will Google actually see the directive on URLs it already knows about?
What is the right sequence for removing indexed filter URLs while managing crawling over the longer term? I am also unsure how to separate genuinely useful filtered landing pages from combinations that should never appear in search.
