Google’s Crawl Team Filed Bugs Against WordPress Plugins

Google’s crawl workforce 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 Record podcast. His workforce filed a difficulty in opposition to WooCommerce after figuring out its add-to-cart URL parameters as a prime supply of crawl waste. WooCommerce picked up the bug and stuck it shortly.

Not each plugin developer has been as responsive. A difficulty 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 main points come from Google’s inner year-end crawl subject report, which Illyes reviewed through the podcast with fellow Google Search Relations workforce member Martin Splitt.

Motion parameters accounted for roughly 25% of all crawl points reported in 2025. Solely faceted navigation ranked larger, at 50%. Collectively, these two classes characterize about three-quarters of each crawl subject Google flagged final 12 months.

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 web site.

Illyes stated these parameters are sometimes injected by CMS plugins somewhat than constructed deliberately by web site homeowners.

The WooCommerce Repair

Google’s crawl workforce filed a bug report in opposition to the plugin, flagging the add-to-cart parameter conduct as a supply of crawl waste affecting websites at scale.

Illyes describes how they recognized the difficulty:

“So we might 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 sort of a well-liked CMS content material administration system. And you then would discover that sure, these plugins are those that add to cart and add to want checklist.”

After which what you’ll do should you had 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 might 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 liked is that the great of us at Woolcommerce virtually instantly picked up the difficulty and so they solved it.”

Why This Issues

This is identical URL parameter drawback Illyes warned about before and continued flagging. Google then formalized its faceted navigation guidelines into official documentation and revised its URL parameter best practices.

The info exhibits these warnings and documentation updates didn’t resolve the issue as a result of the identical points nonetheless dominate crawl reviews.

The crawl waste is commonly baked into the plugin layer. That creates an actual bind for web sites with ecommerce plugins. Your crawl issues will not be your fault, however they’re nonetheless your accountability to handle.

Illyes stated Googlebot can’t decide whether or not a URL house is beneficial “until it crawled a big chunk of that URL house.” By the point you discover the server pressure, the harm is already occurring.

Google constantly recommends robots.txt, as blocking parameter URLs proactively is simpler than ready for signs.

Trying Forward

Google submitting bugs in opposition to open-source plugins may assist cut back crawl waste on the supply. The complete podcast episode with Illyes and Splitt is available with a transcript.