How to fix issues regarding URL parameters?
-
Today, I was reading help article for URL parameters by Google.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1235687
I come to know that, Google is giving value to URLs which ave parameters that change or determine the content of a page. There are too many pages in my website with similar value for Name, Price and Number of product. But, I have restricted all pages by Robots.txt with following syntax.
URLs:
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=price
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100Syntax in Robots.txt
Disallow: /?dir=
Disallow: /?p=
Disallow: /*?limit=Now, I am confuse. Which is best solution to get maximum benefits in SEO?
-
No i dont think so, even if the thought they were duplicate, then they will pick one as the original. so one of them will rank.
If you are still concerned use tha canonicall tag, rather them remove them from index
-
Your concern is that, Google will crawl following all pages. If I will not do any thing with those pages. Right?
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100&p=2
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=60&p=2
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=40&p=2
Now, my website is on 3rd page of Google for Discount Table Lamps keyword.
I have fear that, If Google will crawl multiple pages with duplicate Title tag so it may mesh up current ranking for Discount Table Lamps keyword.
What you think about it?
-
If the content is different, then dont do anything, but if it is duplicate us ethe canonical tag.
The meta tages are not a problem, you are not going to get flaged for that, it would be better if you could make them unique but this is a very small problem
-
Will it really work? Because, both page have different content.
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps have 100 products and
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100&p=2 have different + unique 100 products.
One another problem is regarding Meta info. Both page have same Meta info. If Google will index both pages so it may create warning message for duplicate Meta info across too many pages.
-
Thats the advice i gave you, put a canonical tag in the page
rel="canonical" href="http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps"/>
if google finds http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name
it will know it5 is mean to be http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps
-
Honestly, I did not getting it. Because, I have read one help article about URL parameters by Google.
It shows me some different thing. Google suggested to use Google webmaster tools. But, I have restricted all dynamic pages by robots.txt.
So, I want to know best practice which may help me to gain my crawling and no of indexed pages.
-
I would simplty put a rel canonical in the page point ing to the true URL. so SE's will see them as one page.
It is better to use cononical for the reasons in the google doc you posted, goolge may not pick the nest url to be the canonical, you should make that choice for them
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking Issue for New Site
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
How to deal with parameter URLs as primary internal links and not canonicals? Weird situation inside...
So I have a weird situation, and I was hoping someone could help. This is for an ecommerce site. 1. Parameters are used to tie Product Detail Pages (PDP) to individual categories. This is represented in the breadcrumbs for the page and the use of a categoryid. One product can thus be included in multiple categories. 2. All of these PDPs have a canonical that does not include the parameter / categoryid. 3. With very few exceptions, the canonical URL for the PDPs are not linked to. Instead, the parameter URL is to tie it to a specific category. This is done primarily for the sake of breadcrumbs it seems. One of the big issues we've been having is the canonical URLs not being indexed for a lot of the products. In some instances, the canonicals _are _indexed alongside parameters, or just parameter URLs are indexed. It's all very...mixed up, I suppose. My theory is that the majority of canonical URLs not being linked to anywhere on the site is forcing Google to put preference on the internal link instead. My problem? **I have no idea what to recommend to the client (who will not change the parameter setup). ** One of our Technical SEOs recommended we "Use cookies instead of parameters to assign breadcrumbs based on how the PDP is accessed." I have no experience this. So....yeah. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
URL structure - which one is better?
We are creating a new website and got stuck while deciding the URL structure. Our concern is which url is better in terms of SEO i.e. pune.fabogo.com/spa or fabogo.com/pune/spa and why. Also which one would rank faster if someone searches for **spas in pune if both **pages are same.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabogo_marketing0 -
URL Parameter & crawl stats
Hey Guys,I recently used the URL parameter tool in WBT to mark different urls that offers the same content.I have the parameter "?source=site1" , "?source=site2", etc...It looks like this: www.example.com/article/12?source=site1The "source parameter" are feeds that we provide to partner sites and this way we can track the referral site with our internal analytics platform.Although, pages like:www.example.com/article/12?source=site1 have canonical to the original page www.example.com/article/12, Google indexed both of the URLs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr.bfz
www.example.com/article/12?source=site1andwww.example.com/article/12Last week I used the URL parameter tool to mark "source" parameter "No, this parameter doesnt effect page content (track usage)" and today I see a 40% decrease in my crawl stats.In one hand, It makes sense that now google is not crawling the repeated urls with different sources but in the other hand I thought that efficient crawlability would increase my crawl stats.In additional, google is still indexing same pages with different source parameters.I would like to know if someone have experienced something similar and by increasing crawl efficiency I should expect my crawl stats to go up or down?I really appreciate all the help!Thanks!0 -
Is legacy duplicate content an issue?
I am looking for some proof, or at least evidence to whether or not sites are being hurt by duplicate content. The situation is, that there were 4 content rich newspaper/magazine style sites that were basically just reskins of each other. [ a tactic used under a previous regime 😉 ] The least busy of the sites has since been discontinued & 301d to one of the others, but the traffic was so low on the discontinued site as to be lost in noise, so it is unclear if that was any benefit. Now for the last ~2 years all the sites have had unique content going up, but there are still the archives of articles that are on all 3 remaining sites, now I would like to know whether to redirect, remove or rewrite the content, but it is a big decision - the number of duplicate articles? 263,114 ! Is there a chance this is hurting one or more of the sites? Is there anyway to prove it, short of actually doing the work?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fammy0 -
301 Redirection and apostrophes in URLs
Hi I am experiencing trouble getting any redirects with apostrophes in the URLs to 301 redirect in order to eliminate 404 errors. I have tried replacing the instance of the apostrophe in the source URL field to %27 and variations of this but to no avail. The site is a wordpress site (the old URLS are legacies from the old Business Catalyst site) and I am using the redirection plug in. I have gone into some detail with a helpful soul here http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-deal-with-apostrophes-in-source-url but unfortunately to no result. If anyone has any idea how to solve this puzzle I would be grateful for the help. Example: http://www.tesselaars.com/blog/Inside_Flowers/post/Online_Marketing_for_Florists_Part_1%E2%80%93_A_Website_You_Won%27t_Regret/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seamoose0 -
URL for New Product
Hi, We are creating a section on our established existing website to display our new marketplace product & associated category pages. This marketplace will be a section of the site where our users can sell online training courses that they've created. It will be branded on our site as the Marketplace. Is it important to include 'marketplace' in the URL? Or would it be better to include a relevant keyword such as 'training-courses' instead? Or both? I've assumed I shouldn't use both as that would increase the length of the URLs and number of subfolders.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
Dupicated Site Issues?
We are launching a new site for the Australian market and the URL will just be siteAU.com. Currently the tech team (before we came on board) has it setup with almost exactly the same content (including the site css/nav/structure etc). Some product page content is slightly different, and category pages have different product orders, plus there are location pages that are specific to AU, but otherwise it's the same. The original site: site.ca has been around for 6+ years, with several thousand pages and solid organic ranking (though the last few months have dropped ) Will the new AU site create issues for the original domain? We also have siteUSA.com which follows the same logic and has been live for a while.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BMGSEO0