How blog tags and categories appear in search

Understand how search results display filtered pages of the tags and categories added to blog posts.

Last updated March 1, 2023

Each tag and category you add to a blog page automatically creates a page of filtered results. Links to these filtered pages can appear in search results.

Filtered page URLs

When you click a tag or category link on your site, the filtered page that appears has a static URL, like this:

examplesite.com/blog/category/dogs

examplesite.com/blog/tag/labradoodle

  • Tags and categories are case-sensitive. For example, if your category is Test, its URL would be examplesite.com/blog/category/Test.
  • This URL appears in your site map, and can appear in search engine results, depending on what visitors search for.
  • You can hide static URLs from search and your sitemap.
  • Currently, only blog pages have static URLs. All other collections, and blog pages in discontinued templates, have dynamic URLs.

In the past, filtered blog pages had dynamic URLs, like this:

examplesite.com/blog?category=dogs

examplesite.com/blog?tag=labradoodle

  • Dynamic URLs are less likely to rank highly in search results.
  • If you linked to dynamic URLs in the past, the links will continue to work. The filtered page of results is the same as the static URL. The only difference visitors see is the URL in the browser bar.
  • If you're linking to a tag or category filter on your site or another platform, we recommend using the static URL. This version is easier for visitors to understand, and linking to it may have a small positive impact on SEO.

Hide static URLs

To hide filtered pages' static URLs from search engines and remove them from your sitemap:

  1. Open page settings for that blog page.
  2. Click the SEO tab.
  3. Use the Hide from search engines section to choose your settings. To hide the blog landing page and blog posts from search engines as well, check All pages in this collection.

By default, tags and categories are visible.

Are filtered pages seen as duplicate content?

While search engines sometimes flag duplicate content that looks malicious or deceptive, like identical pages on different domains, filtered views of tags and categories are a regular feature on the web, and aren't seen as suspicious. We also add special code (a canonical metadata tag) to tell search engines that the static URL is the one they should index.

For more information on duplicate content, visit Google's documentation.

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How blog tags and categories appear in search