How to check and fix robots meta tags on filtered pages?

How to check and fix robots meta tags on filtered pages?

The Improved Layered Navigation extension creates a large number of filtered URLs, and their SEO behavior depends on several configuration layers. Because of this, the final robots meta tag is not controlled by a single setting. Instead, it is the result of multiple rules working together.

How robots meta tags are generated

Robots meta tags are applied through a chain of configuration levels. If the output differs from what you expect, it usually means that one of these layers is affecting the result.

1. Magento global SEO configuration
Content → Design → Configuration → (Store View)  → Search Engine Robots



This is the base configuration for the whole store and works as a fallback. If restrictive values such as NOINDEX or NOFOLLOW are set here, they can override other settings and prevent pages from being indexed.

2. Custom Facets (Pages) configuration
Amasty → Improved Layered Navigation: Pages → General



When custom pages are enabled, they add extra logic that can influence SEO behavior. The Use Strict Pages Matching option controls whether a page keeps its original SEO rules or can be modified by additional filters. If this option is disabled, applied filters may change both the page content and its robots meta tag, which can result in inconsistent behavior.

3. Robots Tag Control settings
Amasty → Improved Layered Navigation: SEO → Configuration → Robots Tag Control



This configuration defines how filtered pages are treated from an indexing perspective. It includes default robots rules for filter URLs and how combinations of filters are handled.

For example, if the option to set noindex for multiple attribute filters is enabled, pages with several active filters will automatically receive a noindex directive. This explains why deeper filter combinations are often not indexed.

4. Attribute-level SEO settings
Stores → Attributes → Product → (Attribute) → Improved Layered Navigation → SEO



Individual attributes such as category or brand filters may have their own SEO rules. These rules can apply only to specific filters or combinations, which may cause different indexing behavior compared to other pages.

Info
Even if a page is marked as noindex, nofollow, it can still be crawled and may appear in Search Console reports. This is expected, since search engines can discover such URLs through internal linking.

To ensure proper consolidation of SEO signals and avoid duplicate content issues, canonical tags should be used. In Magento, they can be enabled under Stores → Configuration → Catalog → Catalog → Search Engine Optimization:


The Improved Layered Navigation extension also supports adding canonical tags to noindex pages. More details are available in the guide: How to display canonical tag on the filter page?

      • Related Articles

      • How to customize the SEO content of the pages with SEO Meta Tags Templates?

        Some extensions allow the creation of pages but lack the functionality of customizing their SEO parameters. For example, you may be willing to add NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW robot tags to the authors, categories or tags pages created with the Blog Pro ...

      • How to use meta tags templates?

        You can create unique meta tags for many pages at once using meta tag templates. If you'd like to generate a template, please navigate to Amasty → SEO Meta Tags Templates → Meta Tags by Category/Meta Tags by Custom URLs. First, please select a main ...

      • How to hide a page from Google (block indexation)?

        If you'd like to hide a page from the Google search engine, please use the Meta tags by custom URL functionality. It allows you to add the 'robots-noindex,nofollow' meta tag to block indexation of any page. Please go to Amasty → SEO Meta Tags ...

      • How can I check if AMP is working or not?

        When the extension is enabled and configured correctly, an AMP page can be reached when searching for a product in Google from a mobile device. In Search Results, you'll get a link to the AMP page with an AMP icon. When you follow the link, you'll ...

      • How to fix meta content with ChatGPT AI Content Generator?

        Since v. 2.6.0 of the module, we added the ChatGPT AI Content Generator Lite module to the SEO Toolkit Pro package and the ChatGPT AI Content Generator Pro module to the SEO Toolkit Premium package, which allows to automatically fix meta content ...