A site setup (intentional or accidental) that causes crawlers to get stuck in infinite loops.
I have seen what happens when a website gets too complex: Google’s crawler gets caught in an endless loop, like a spider in its own web.
This nasty problem, called a spider trap, instantly wastes your crawl budget and stops your important pages from being indexed.
I will clearly explain What is Spider Trap?, show you where to look for it, and give you the steps to save your website’s SEO health.
What is Spider Trap? The Endless Loop
Let us define this technical headache: What is Spider Trap? It is a structural issue on a website that causes a search engine crawler (or “spider”) to generate a huge, often infinite, number of irrelevant or duplicate URLs.
The crawler gets stuck exploring these useless pages, wasting its time and preventing it from finding your good content.
Common causes include faulty internal site search features or improperly configured layered product filters.
Spider Trap Vulnerabilities by CMS
My CMS choice changes where I need to focus my efforts to prevent these traps from forming.
WordPress (WP)
In WordPress, spider traps often arise from unoptimized tags, internal site search results, or poorly designed infinite scrolling features.
I check my robots.txt file and use the “Disallow” rule to block crawlers from accessing the search results URL pattern.
I also ensure that my pagination (next page links) is set up correctly to avoid creating endless loops of dates or pages.
Shopify
Shopify’s biggest spider trap risk comes from faceted navigation, which are the filters and sorting options on collection pages.
Combining multiple filters, like sorting by “price” and filtering by “color,” can generate thousands of unique, but useless, URLs.
I use the canonical tag on filtered pages to point back to the main, clean collection URL, preventing duplicate content issues.
Wix
Wix generally manages its technical SEO well, but dynamically generated pages can sometimes lead to traps.
I carefully review any pages with complex filtering or user-generated content to ensure the URL parameters are controlled.
I always use Google Search Console to monitor the “Crawl Stats” to see if Google is suddenly discovering millions of new URLs on my site.
Webflow
In Webflow, a spider trap can occur if I accidentally use a relative link without a slash, creating an endlessly deep directory structure.
I check all my custom code and dynamic collection lists to ensure the linking structure is clean and correctly formatted.
I make sure my developer correctly implements pagination for any large collection lists, rather than creating an infinite scroll that crawlers can get stuck in.
Custom CMS
A custom CMS means I must programmatically prevent traps by controlling all dynamic URL generation on the server-side.
I instruct my team to use the robots.txt file to explicitly disallow crawling of any URLs that contain session IDs or tracking parameters.
The correct, technical solution is to fix the underlying code flaw that generates the bad links in the first place.
Spider Trap Prevention by Industry
I tailor my prevention methods to the structural complexity common in each business type.
Ecommerce
Ecommerce sites are the most vulnerable due to the massive number of products and filtering options.
I block crawling of unnecessary filters like “sort by price” in robots.txt and use canonical tags aggressively on all filtered views.
This strategy saves my crawl budget for my important product pages and core category pages.
Local Businesses
For simpler local business sites, a trap can occur with improper calendar functionality or outdated redirect chains.
I ensure any calendar or event pages have proper “noindex” tags and do not create endless date links.
I regularly check that old pages are not redirecting to irrelevant pages, which Google can view as a structural flaw.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SaaS sites with huge documentation libraries or complex user-specific dashboards are at risk.
I use the robots.txt file to completely block the search crawler from accessing any private user accounts or internal application pages.
I ensure my internal site search is not crawlable, as this can generate a limitless number of low-value, thin pages.
Blogs
Blogs with many categories and tags can inadvertently create duplicate pages that trap crawlers in endless loops.
I ensure that my category pages do not duplicate the content of my main blog pages, only using excerpts.
I often set my tag pages to ‘noindex, follow’ so Google can still pass link juice but will not index the low-value pages.
FAQ Section: Your Quick Spider Trap Answers
How do spider traps hurt my SEO?
They waste Google’s limited crawl budget on useless pages, meaning Google takes longer to find and index your new, valuable content.
They also create massive amounts of duplicate content, which signals a low-quality site to search engines.
What is the difference between an infinite loop and a spider trap?
An infinite loop is a redirect that sends a crawler back and forth between two pages forever, which is a common cause of a spider trap.
A spider trap is the broader structural problem where the website generates an infinite number of unique URLs, trapping the crawler.
What is the first thing I should check if I suspect a trap?
I check Google Search Console’s “Crawl Stats” report to see if Google is suddenly crawling an unusually high number of pages.
If the number of crawled pages is far higher than the number of pages I have on my site, I know I have a trap.
Will using a canonical tag fix a spider trap?
No, a canonical tag only tells Google which page to index, but it does not stop the crawler from wasting its budget crawling the other duplicate versions.
The true fix is blocking the problematic URLs in robots.txt or fixing the underlying code flaw.
