Adding parameters in URLs and linking to a page
-
Hi,
Here's a fairly technical question:
We would like to implement badge feature where linking websites using a badge would use urls such as:
domain.com/page?state=texas&city=houston
domain.com/page?state=neveda&city=lasvegas
Important note: the parameter will change the information and layout of the page: domain.com/page
Would those 2 urls above along with their extra parameters be considered the same page as domain.com/page by google's crawler?
We're considering adding the parameter "state" and "city" to Google WMT url parameter tool to tel them who to handle those parameters.
Any feedback or comments is appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
Martin
-
Thanks Paul. You confirmed our understanding.
Another head is always better!
Thanks again.
Martin
-
Sorry for the misunderstanding, Martin. I was misled by this statement:
... the parameter will change the information and layout of the page
If the content of the page will truly be different depending on the parameter, the search engines are probably going to consider them separate URLs no matter what you do.. That's their whole definition of separate pages.
If the parameter simply rearranges a page's content (e.g. creates a different sort order for the same products) then combining the pages can usually work.
If you want to try to combine these pages for ranking purposes anyway, the tool to use is the rel=canonical tag. You insert it into the header of the custom parameter pages pointing back to the primary page.
Google is clear though that canonical tags are taken as suggestions only, and if it thinks your pages should actually be indexed separately, it will ignore the canonical.
You could then back this process up by using Bing & Google WMT to specify that the ?state= and city= parameters are to be ignored. But the above caveat still applies.
Paul
-
Thank you for your feedback Paul.
Well, I guess I didn't explained myself correctly because we do want to have all the parameters considered 1 page!
Our goal is 2 fold:
1- Have the parameters in the URL considered 1 page in order to have 1 page with many links pointing to it in order to have higher page authority (instead of 20+ pages with lower authority).
2- Keep the user experience relevant by display and organizing the page content based on the referring url (in our case the links from badges).
So in other words how do we (if possible) make sure google and bing consider all parameters as combined page?
Thanks again!
Martin
-
You're actually in the reverse position of most people dealing with URL parameters, Martin. By default, the Search Engines consider different parameters to be different pages and most users are struggling with how to make the SEs understand they're all one page to avoid duplicate content issues.
In your case, you want the SEs to treat those pages according to the way the SEs normally do, which means you "shouldn't" need to do anything extra to get them indexed separately. That's what's naturally going to happen.
I'm with you on the hinting in Google Webmaster Tools though. May as well use that capability to confirm for Google that you do want those parameters indexed. You should do the same thing in Bing Webmaster Tools as well. Kind of a "belt & suspenders" approach.
Paul
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
-
301 redirect adding trailing slash to url
I am looking into a .htacess file for a site I look after and have noticed that the urls are all 301 redirecting from a none slash directory to a trailing slashed directory/folders. e.g. www.domain.com/folder gets 301 redirected to www.domain.com/folder/ Will this do much harm and reduce the effect on the page and any links pointing to the site be lessened? Secondly I am not sure what part of my htaccess is causing the redirect. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.co.uk [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
Technical SEO | | TimHolmes
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R,NE] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L] or could a wordpress ifmodule be causing the problem? Any info would be apreciated.0 -
Will Adding Publish Date at end of Page Title for Blog posts Hurt SEO?
I'd like to be able to easily track blog posts by month but in Google reports when you set a date range obviously older blog post still appear and with amount of blog posts we generate without seeing the date in the title it's not obvious what was published and when it was published. For example if a Blog Title was "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15 would it hurt SEO? The reason is I'd like to have a quick way to know how new posts do each month compared to older content
Technical SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
How should we handle re-directory links? Should we remove these links?
We are currently cleaning up bad links that were purchased by a previous SEO agency. We have found links on anonym.to pages that redirect traffic to our site automatically. How should this be handled? Should we remove these links?
Technical SEO | | Lorne_Marr0 -
Will Google Recrawl an Indexed URL Which is No Longer Internally Linked?
We accidentally introduced Google to our incomplete site. The end result: thousands of pages indexed which return nothing but a "Sorry, no results" page. I know there are many ways to go about this, but the sheer number of pages makes it frustrating. Ideally, in the interim, I'd love to 404 the offending pages and allow Google to recrawl them, realize they're dead, and begin removing them from the index. Unfortunately, we've removed the initial internal links that lead to this premature indexation from our site. So my question is, will Google revisit these pages based on their own records (as in, this page is indexed, let's go check it out again!), or will they only revisit them by following along a current site structure? We are signed up with WMT if that helps.
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
20 000 duplicates in Moz crawl due to Joomla URL parameters. How to fix?
We have a problem of massive duplicate content in Joomla. Here is an example of the "base" URL: http://www.binary-options.biz/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html For some reason Joomla creates many versions of this URL, for example: http://www.binary-options.biz/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html or http://www.binary-options.biz/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html?q=/index.php/Web-Pages/binary-options-platforms.html So it lists the URL parameter ?q= and then repeats part of the beforegoing URL. This leads to tens of thousands duplicate pages in our content heavy site. Any ideas how to fix this? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | Xmanic0 -
To many links on page. Big or small issue for eCommerce
On my site I have around 3k pages and about 90 categories. Most of which have a sensible number of products but some have only a few products and some have loads. if I have say 40 links on the page ignoring the producand is it a big problem if I have more than 60 products on the page? Assuming a link limit per page of 100 user wise we have filters and sorts for thme to find what they breed without issue. But simply from an seo point of view how damaging would I be to have the 23 "to many links on page issues? Worth fixing by making two categories and splitting out products even tho it would hinder the user.
Technical SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Why does it say I have a page with 106 links, but when I look there are only like 4?
Looking through my first crawl results and there is a page showing with 106 or so links. I clicked into the post and there are only 3 links and maybe 10 photos from Flickr. I have no clue how 106 popped up. Can you explain?
Technical SEO | | pammacn0 -
Does page speed affect what pages are in the index?
We have around 1.3m total pages, Google currently crawls on average 87k a day and our average page load is 1.7 seconds. Out of those 1.3m pages(1.2m being "spun up") google has only indexed around 368k and our SEO person is telling us that if we speed up the pages they will crawl the pages more and thus will index more of them. I personally don't believe this. At 87k pages a day Google has crawled our entire site in 2 weeks so they should have all of our pages in their DB by now and I think they are not index because they are poorly generated pages and it has nothing to do with the speed of the pages. Am I correct? Would speeding up the pages make Google crawl them faster and thus get more pages indexed?
Technical SEO | | upper2bits0