Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Query parameters for normalization in Bing
-
Almost everyday I get this-
Query parameters for normalization found on www.sitename.com
Site: www.sitename.comDate: 3/26/2013Priority: LowBing has detected new parameters in your URLsAnyone know why? We aren't changing anything. I have read it has to do with internal urls but I can find out what internal urls this is a problem with.
-
We see this too. We have canonicals in place, and we still see the error. And there's no insight into which parameters are causing issues.
-
Here's an answer straight from Duane Forrester of Bing:
"It means that those parameters may be causing Bing to think you have duplicate content issues. If your content can appear on two individual URLs, that can be an issue, as we don't know which one you want indexed, ranked, etc. So, the tools we offer allow you to control this by telling us to ignore a parameter. We can suggest parameters we find, but it's your choice on if you want to tell us to ignore them (and the attendant URLs) or not.
For example, if you have a /print/ folder on your site, you can tell us to ignore everything under the "print parameter". By entering "print" as the parameter to be ignored, we'll skip indexing the content held in the print folder on your site."
Duane doesn't say so in the article, but you can adjust your parameter settngs in Bing Webmaster Tools. Info here:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/ignore-url-parameters-d7496c65
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
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
-
SEO effect of URL with subfolder versus parameters?
I'll make this quick and simple. Let's say you have a business located in several cities. You've built individual pages for each city (linked to from a master list of your locations). For SEO purposes is it better to have the URL be a subfolder, or a parameter off of the home page URL: https://www.mysite.com/dallas which is essentially https://www.mysite.com/dallas/index.php or http://www.mysite.com/?city=dallas which is essentially https://www.mysite.com/index.php?city=dallas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Searchout0 -
Is it normal for Bing rankings to fluctuate so much on a daily basis?
Hi all, I launched a new website in Aug 2015, and have had some success with ranking organically on Google (position 2 - 5 for all of my target terms). However I'm still not getting any traction on Bing. I know that they use completely different algorithms so it's not unusual to rank well on one but not the other, but the ranking behaviour that I see seems quite odd. We've been bouncing in and out of the top 50 for quite some time, with shifts of 30+ positions often on a daily basis (see attached). This seems to be the case for our full range of target terms, and not just the most competitive ones. I'm hoping someone can advise on whether this is normal behaviour for a relatively young website, or if it more likely points to an issue with how Bing is crawling my site. I'm using Bing Webmaster tools and there aren't any crawl or sitemap issues, or significant seo flags. Thanks dhYgh
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tinhat0 -
How can I get Bing to index my subdomain correctly?
Hi guys, My website exists on a subdomain (i.e. https://website.subdomain.com) and is being indexed correctly on all search engines except Bing and Duck Duck Go, which list 'https://www.website.subdomain.com'. Unfortunately my subdomain isn't configured for www (the domain is out of my control), so searchers are seeing a server error when clicking on my homepage in the SERPs. I have verified the site successfully in Bing Webmaster Tools, but it still shows up incorrectly. Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this issue? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Should I disallow all URL query strings/parameters in Robots.txt?
Webmaster Tools correctly identifies the query strings/parameters used in my URLs, but still reports duplicate title tags and meta descriptions for the original URL and the versions with parameters. For example, Webmaster Tools would report duplicates for the following URLs, despite it correctly identifying the "cat_id" and "kw" parameters: /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jmorehouse
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?cat_id=87
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?kw=CROM Additionally, theses pages have self-referential canonical tags, so I would think I'd be covered, but I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs, despite Webmaster Tools not reporting any errors. As I see it, I have two options: Manually tell Google that these parameters have no effect on page content via the URL Parameters section in Webmaster Tools (in case Google is unable to automatically detect this, and I am being penalized as a result). Add "Disallow: *?" to hide all query/parameter URLs from Google. My concern here is that most backlinks include the parameters, and in some cases these parameter URLs outrank the original. Any thoughts?0 -
Do UTM URL parameters hurt SEO backlink value?
Does www.example.com and www.example.com/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Press+Release&utm_campaign=Google have the same SEO backlink value? I would assume that Google knows the difference.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkhGT0 -
Why am I not ranking in Google, but I am in Yahoo and Bing?
The website in question is: www.stbarthexclusives.com Our keywords are currently ranking for both Bing and Yahoo, but we're not appearing anywhere on Google. The website is being crawled successfully, but we still don't have any results. I hoping somebody can point me in the general right direction to fix/correct this problem. Additionally, there's a decent amount of "rel=canonical tags" on the website. If that helps your evaluation. Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Endora0 -
Best way to de-index content from Google and not Bing?
We have a large quantity of URLs that we would like to de-index from Google (we are affected b Panda), but not Bing. What is the best way to go about doing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Does Google crawl the pages which are generated via the site's search box queries?
For example, if I search for an 'x' item in a site's search box and if the site displays a list of results based on the query, would that page be crawled? I am asking this question because this would be a URL that is non existent on the site and hence am confused as to whether Google bots would be able to find it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pulseseo0