Faceted Navigation – Impact on Accessibility & SEO with Fixes

Recently, Google highlighted the challenges faceted navigation poses for SEO But the impact doesn’t stop there – it can also create significant accessibility barriers for users with disabilities.

This article explores how faceted navigation affects accessibility and SEO, along with actionable steps to fix these issues and make your website more inclusive and search-friendly.

What is Faceted Navigation?

Faceted navigation is a website feature that allows users to filter and sort content based on specific attributes. For example:

• An e-commerce store lets you filter products by size, colour, price, or brand.
• A job board allows searches based on location, industry, and experience level.

Each filter combination generates a unique URL, helping users refine their results. While this feature improves user experience, if not implemented correctly, it can create challenges for SEO and accessibility.

How Does Faceted Navigation Impact SEO?

First, let’s clarify: Faceted navigation isn’t always bad for SEO. It only becomes problematic when it doesn’t follow best practices. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s explore how poorly implemented faceted navigation impacts SEO.

• Overcrawling, where search engines waste resources crawling countless unnecessary URLs.
• Slower discovery of new, important content as crawling capacity is drained by irrelevant pages.

How to Fix the Issue

Google suggests two simple ways to solve the problem:

1. Prevent crawling (if indexing isn’t needed):
   • Use robots.txt to block search engines from crawling faceted navigation URLs.
   • Alternatively, use URL fragments (#) for filters, as search engines usually ignore them.
   • Return a 404 status code for filter combinations with no results.
2. Optimise URLs (if indexing is needed):
   • Use the standard & separator for URL parameters.
   • Keep the filter order consistent in the URL path.

These steps can help manage faceted navigation effectively while avoiding SEO problems.

How Does Faceted Navigation Impact Accessibility?

Faceted navigation isn’t just an SEO concern – it can also exclude users with disabilities if not designed with accessibility in mind. If your website is fully WCAG-compliant, you’re in the clear. But if it’s not, these issues could even lead to a lawsuit.

Here’s how faceted navigation can create accessibility challenges:

• Keyboard navigation failures:
  Filters might not work with keyboard-only navigation, leaving users with mobility impairments unable to proceed.
• Screen readers missing updates:
  Dynamic filtering (without reloading the page) might not alert screen readers, so users won’t know the results have changed.
• Cognitive overload:
  Too many filter options – or invalid combinations – can overwhelm users with cognitive disabilities.
• Empty or confusing results:
  Filters that return no results may lack clear messaging, creating frustrating dead ends.

Addressing these issues ensures your site works for everyone, while keeping you legally safe.

How to Fix the Issue

The best way to resolve accessibility issues is to ensure your website is WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliant. If it’s already compliant, faceted navigation won’t be a problem. If not, here’s what you can do:

1. Make filters keyboard accessible so users with mobility issues can navigate them.
2. Use ARIA live regions to alert screen readers when filtered results update dynamically.
3. Handle empty results with clear messages like “No items match your selection” to avoid user confusion.
4. Simplify filter options to prevent overwhelming users with too many or duplicate choices.
5. Keep URLs clean and consistent by using standard separators (&) and maintaining a predictable filter order.

By following these steps, you can address accessibility issues with faceted navigation and make it more user-friendly. That said, the most reliable and future-proof solution is to make your entire website fully accessible.

If you’re unsure where to start, WebYes can help. Audit your website with WebYes to identify accessibility issues across your site and get insights to improve it. It’s the perfect starting point to make your site fully accessible and future-proof.