Skip to content

Ecommerce SEO for large product catalogs

Find crawl traps from filters and sort options, clean up duplicate product pages, fix heavy images and see which pages Google has indexed.

TL;DR

Too long; didn't read
Show summary

What does BigRank check on an online store?

BigRank crawls your catalog, finds URL patterns that explode into endless variants, flags duplicate and thin pages, audits product images and checks index status for the pages that earn traffic. Competitor Ads shows the search ads rivals run.

How many pages can it crawl?
Up to 5,000 pages per project on Pro, 10,000 on Max and 50,000 on Ultra.
Does it find faceted navigation problems?
Yes. Crawl Trap Candidates flags URL patterns with many query-parameter combinations, faceted paths and repeating segments.
Can I keep filter URLs out of the crawl?
Yes. Add exclude patterns in the project's crawl settings to skip parameters and faceted paths.
Does it check product images?
Yes. The image audit flags missing alt text, missing dimensions, broken files, legacy formats and files over 200 KB.

Why big catalogs drift out of shape

Each filter, variant and retired product adds URLs. Over time crawlers spend their visits on near-identical pages while the products that sell load slowly or drop out of the index.

  • Filters that multiply URLs

    Sort orders, facets and parameters create thousands of near-identical pages that soak up crawl time.

  • Duplicate and retired products

    Variants, discontinued items and parameter URLs leave thin or duplicate pages behind.

  • Heavy product images

    Large photos and missing dimensions slow category and product templates.

Find crawl traps and the directories that fail

Crawl Trap Candidates shows URL patterns that explode into variants, and Crawl Failure Hotspots shows which directories return the most errors and timeouts. Both come from the crawl alone, without Search Console.

Learn more about Quick Wins
  • Faceted and parameter URL patterns
  • Redirect chains and loops in Redirect Waste
  • Ranked by impact and ease

Product images that load fast and describe the product

The image audit lists each image the crawler finds, with the pages it appears on. Filters surface missing alt text, missing width and height, broken files, legacy formats and files over 200 KB.

Learn more about image SEO analysis
  • Missing srcset on responsive images
  • Older formats that could be WebP or AVIF
  • Source pages for each image

Clean up duplicate and thin product pages

The site audit flags duplicate titles and meta descriptions, thin content, near-duplicate pages and canonicals that point elsewhere or to broken URLs.

Learn more about website audits
  • Near-duplicate content detection
  • Missing and multiple canonicals
  • Sitemap URLs that don't return 200

See the search ads competitors run

Competitor Ads collects ads for your domain or a competitor from the Google Ads Transparency Center, with previews, format and the first and last dates each ad was shown.

Learn more about competitor ads
  • 20 ad searches a day on Max
  • Previews of text, image and video ads
  • Facebook and Instagram ads are planned

A catalog workflow from crawl to index

Five passes that take a store from wasted crawl time to indexed, fast product pages.

  1. Crawl the catalog

    Set the page limit and depth, and exclude known parameter patterns.

  2. Close the crawl traps

    Use Crawl Trap Candidates to block or consolidate filter URLs that create endless variants.

  3. Consolidate duplicates

    Fix canonicals and retire near-identical or discontinued product pages.

  4. Lighten the templates

    Test a product, a category and the home page, then act on the Lighthouse opportunities.

  5. Confirm indexing

    Check Index Status for key pages and recrawl to confirm the fixes held.

Catalog problems it helps solve

Recurring catalog work where the number of URLs, not the number of products, causes the trouble.

  • Discontinued products

    Find internal links that still point at removed product pages returning 404, and redirect or update them.

  • Seasonal categories

    Audit new category and landing pages before a sale starts.

  • Product schema

    Find product pages with missing JSON-LD or structured data that fails to parse.

  • Category rankings

    Track the keywords that matter most to your top categories, by country and device.

  • Sale-day uptime

    Check the store as often as every minute on Ultra, so an outage during a promotion surfaces quickly.

  • Ad research

    See which search ads competitors run before you plan a promotion.

Stores that get the most out of BigRank

BigRank fits online stores where filters, variants and old products create more SEO problems than the products themselves.

  • Stores with large catalogs and faceted navigation
  • Merchants planning a migration or redesign
  • Teams that own both content and technical SEO
  • Headless and custom storefronts

Ecommerce FAQ

Answers about catalog size, platforms, indexing and competitor data.

Are product images on a CDN audited too?

Yes. Images served from another host are listed under the External filter, with their status code, alt text and the pages that use them.

Do I need Search Console for the audit?

No. The crawl audit works on its own. Search Console adds Index Status and the traffic-based Quick Wins.

How does Index Status choose pages?

It inspects the most important pages first, by traffic, sitemap and recent changes, then rotates through the rest within Google's daily inspection quota.

Can I send findings to developers?

Yes. Export any table, including the source pages, to CSV or XLSX.

How often is the catalog recrawled?

Weekly by default, daily on higher plans, and on demand whenever you start a crawl.

Does it estimate competitors' traffic?

On Max and Ultra. Each competitor's monthly traffic is estimated from our own SERP keyword data (search volume times the click-through rate at its position). It is an estimate, and its coverage grows as more searches pass through the platform.