Google’s crawl group has been submitting bugs immediately in opposition to WordPress plugins that waste crawl price range at scale.
Gary Illyes, Analyst at Google, shared the main points on the most recent Search Off the File podcast. His group filed a problem in opposition to WooCommerce after figuring out its add-to-cart URL parameters as a high supply of crawl waste. WooCommerce picked up the bug and glued it shortly.
Not each plugin developer has been as responsive. A problem filed in opposition to a separate action-parameter plugin remains to be sitting unclaimed. And Google says its outreach to the developer of a business calendar plugin that generates infinite URL paths fell on deaf ears.
What Google Discovered
The small print come from Google’s inside year-end crawl challenge report, which Illyes reviewed through the podcast with fellow Google Search Relations group member Martin Splitt.
Motion parameters accounted for roughly 25% of all crawl points reported in 2025. Solely faceted navigation ranked greater, at 50%. Collectively, these two classes symbolize about three-quarters of each crawl challenge Google flagged final yr.
The issue with motion parameters is that every one creates what seems to be a brand new URL by including textual content like ?add_to_cart=true. Parameters can stack, doubling or tripling the crawlable URL house on a website.
Illyes mentioned these parameters are sometimes injected by CMS plugins moderately than constructed deliberately by website house owners.
The WooCommerce Repair
Google’s crawl group filed a bug report in opposition to the plugin, flagging the add-to-cart parameter habits as a supply of crawl waste affecting websites at scale.
Illyes describes how they recognized the difficulty:
“So we’d attempt to dig into like the place are these coming from after which typically you may determine that maybe these motion parameters are coming from WordPress plug-ins as a result of WordPress is kind of a preferred CMS content material administration system. And you then would discover that sure, these plugins are those that add to cart and add to want listing.”
After which what you’d do in case you have been a Gary is to attempt to see if they’re open supply within the sense that they’ve a repository the place you may report bugs and points and in each of those instances the reply was sure. So we’d file points in opposition to these uh plugins.”
WooCommerce responded and shipped a repair. Illyes famous the turnaround was quick, however different plugin builders with related points haven’t responded. Illyes didn’t title the opposite plugins.
He added:
“What I actually, actually cherished is that the great people at Woolcommerce nearly instantly picked up the difficulty and so they solved it.”
Why This Issues
This is similar URL parameter downside Illyes warned about earlier than and continued flagging. Google then formalized its faceted navigation pointers into official documentation and revised its URL parameter finest practices.
The info reveals these warnings and documentation updates didn’t clear up the issue as a result of the identical points nonetheless dominate crawl stories.
The crawl waste is usually baked into the plugin layer. That creates an actual bind for web sites with ecommerce plugins. Your crawl issues might not be your fault, however they’re nonetheless your accountability to handle.
Illyes mentioned Googlebot can’t decide whether or not a URL house is helpful “until it crawled a big chunk of that URL house.” By the point you discover the server pressure, the injury is already occurring.
Google constantly recommends robots.txt, as blocking parameter URLs proactively is more practical than ready for signs.
Wanting Forward
Google submitting bugs in opposition to open-source plugins may assist cut back crawl waste on the supply. The total podcast episode with Illyes and Splitt is out there with a transcript.
