Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?

    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.

    Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    15
    3273
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Ria_
      Ria_ last edited by

      So I currently have approximately 1000 of these URLs indexed, when I only want roughly 100 of them.

      Let's say the URL is www.example.com/page.php?par1=ABC123=&par2=DEF456=&par3=GHI789=

      All the indexed URLs follow that same kinda format, but I only want to index the URLs that have a par1 of ABC (but that could be ABC123 or ABC456 or whatever). Using URL Parameters tool in Search Console, I can ask Googlebot to only crawl URLs with a specific value. But is there any way to get a partial match, using regex maybe?

      Am I wasting my time with Search Console, and should I just disallow any page.php without par1=ABC in robots.txt?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Andy.Drinkwater
        Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

        No problem 🙂

        Hope you get it sorted!

        -Andy

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Ria_
          Ria_ @DirkC last edited by

          Thank you! 😄

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Ria_
            Ria_ @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

            Haha, I think the train passed the station on that one. I would have realised eventually... XD

            Thanks for your help!

            Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • DirkC
              DirkC last edited by

              Don't forget that . & ? have a specific meaning within regex - if you want to use them for pattern matching you will have to escape them. Also be aware that not all bots are capable of interpreting regex in robots.txt - you might want to be more explicit on the user agent - only using regex for Google bot.

              User-agent: Googlebot

              #disallowing page.php and any parameters after it

              disallow: /page.php

              #but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC

              allow: page.php?par1=ABC

              Dirk

              Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Andy.Drinkwater
                Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

                Ah sorry I missed that bit!

                -Andy

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Andy.Drinkwater
                  Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

                  Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index.

                  The trouble with this is that if you disallow first, Google won't be able to crawl the page to act on the noindex. If you add a noindex flag, Google won't index them the next time it comes-a-crawling and then you will be good to disallow 🙂

                  I'm not actually sure of the best way for you to get the noindex in to the page header of those pages though.

                  -Andy

                  Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Ria_
                    Ria_ @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                    Yep, have done. (Briefly mentioned in my previous response.) Doesn't pass 😞

                    Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Ria_
                      Ria_ @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                      I thought so too, but according to Google the trailing wildcard is completely unnecessary, and only needs to be used mid-URL.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Ria_
                        Ria_ @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                        Hi Andy,

                        Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index. Didn't want to remove them before I've blocked Google from crawling them in case they get added back again next time Google comes a-crawling, as has happened before when I've simply removed a URL here and there. Does that make sense or am I getting myself mixed up here?

                        My other hack of a solution would be to check the URL in the page.php, and if URL includes par1=ABC then insert noindex meta tag. (Not sure if that would work well or not...)

                        Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                          Martijn_Scheijbeler @Ria_ last edited by

                          My guess would be that this line needs an * at the end.
                          Allow: /page.php?par1=ABC*

                          Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Andy.Drinkwater
                            Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

                            Sorry Martijn, just to jump in here for a second - Ria, you can test this via the Robots.txt testing tool in search console before going live to make sure it work.

                            -Andy

                            Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Ria_
                              Ria_ @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                              Hi Martijn, thanks for your response!

                              I'm currently looking at something like this...

                              **user-agent: *** #disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
                              disallow: /page.php #but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
                              allow: /page.php?par1=ABC

                              I would have thought that you could disallow things broadly like that and give an exception, as you can with files in disallowed folders. But it's not passing Google's robots.txt Tester.

                              One thing that's probably worth mentioning really is that there are only two variables that I want to allow of the par1 parameter. For example's sake, ABC123 and ABC456. So would need to be either a partial match or "this or that" kinda deal, disallowing everything else.

                              Andy.Drinkwater Martijn_Scheijbeler 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • Andy.Drinkwater
                                Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                                Hi Ria,

                                I have never tried regular expressions in this way, so I can't tell you if this would work or not.

                                However, If all 1000 of these URL's are already indexed, just disallowing access won't then remove them from Google. You would ideally be able to place a noindex tag on those pages and let Google act on them, then you will be good to disallow. I am pretty sure there is no option to noindex under the URL Parameter Tool.

                                I hope that makes sense?

                                -Andy

                                Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                                  Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                                  Hi Ria,

                                  What you could do, but it also depends on the rest of your structure is Disallow these urls based on the parameters (what you could do in a worst case scenario is that you would disallow all URLs and then put an exception Allow in there as well to make sure you still have the right URLs being indexed).

                                  Martijn.

                                  Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • 1 / 1
                                  • First post
                                    Last post

                                  Got a burning SEO question?

                                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                  Start my free trial


                                  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.

                                  • See all categories

                                  Related Questions

                                  • BHeffernan

                                    Can subdomains hurt your primary domain's SEO?

                                    Our primary website https://domain.com has a subdomain https://subDomain.domain.com and on that subdomain we have a jive-hosted community, with a few links to and fro. In GA they are set up as different properties but there are many SEO issues in the jive-hosted site, in which many different people can create content, delete content, comment, etc. There are issues related to how jive structures content, broken links, etc. My question is this: Aside from the SEO issues with the subdomain, can the performance of that subdomain negatively impact the SEO performance and rank of the primary domain? I've heard and read conflicting reports about this and it would be nice to hear from the MOZ community about options to resolve such issues if they exist. Thanks.

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BHeffernan
                                    1
                                  • Lauriedechaseaux

                                    Displaying Vanity URL in Google Search Result

                                    Hi Moz! Not sure if this has been asked before, but is there any way to tell Google to display a vanity URL (that has been 301d) instead of the actual URL in the SERP? Example: www.domainA.com is a vanity URL (bought specifically for Brand Identity reasons) that redirects to www.domainB.com. Is it possible to have the domainA Url show up in Google for a Branded search query? Thanks in advance! Arjun

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lauriedechaseaux
                                    0
                                  • andyheath

                                    Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether

                                    Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath
                                    0
                                  • Bob_van_Biezen

                                    Crawled page count in Search console

                                    Hi Guys, I'm working on a project (premium-hookahs.nl) where I stumble upon a situation I can’t address. Attached is a screenshot of the crawled pages in Search Console. History: Doing to technical difficulties this webshop didn’t always no index filterpages resulting in thousands of duplicated pages. In reality this webshops has less than 1000 individual pages. At this point we took the following steps to result this: Noindex filterpages. Exclude those filterspages in Search Console and robots.txt. Canonical the filterpages to the relevant categoriepages. This however didn’t result in Google crawling less pages. Although the implementation wasn’t always sound (technical problems during updates) I’m sure this setup has been the same for the last two weeks. Personally I expected a drop of crawled pages but they are still sky high. Can’t imagine Google visits this site 40 times a day. To complicate the situation: We’re running an experiment to gain positions on around 250 long term searches. A few filters will be indexed (size, color, number of hoses and flavors) and three of them can be combined. This results in around 250 extra pages. Meta titles, descriptions, h1 and texts are unique as well. Questions: -          Excluding in robots.txt should result in Google not crawling those pages right? -          Is this number of crawled pages normal for a website with around 1000 unique pages? -          What am I missing? BxlESTT

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bob_van_Biezen
                                    0
                                  • Jonathan.Smith

                                    Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?

                                    I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith
                                    0
                                  • mark_baird

                                    Do Q&A 's work for SEO

                                    If I create a good community in my particular field on my SEO site and have a quality Q&A section like this etc (ripping of MOZ's idea here sorry, I hope it's ok) will the long term returns be worth the effort of creating and man ageing this. Is the user created content of as much use as I think it will be?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird
                                    0
                                  • Motava

                                    Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords

                                    For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
                                    ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63‎
                                    META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
                                    www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120‎
                                    META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
                                    www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
                                    META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
                                    mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17‎
                                    META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27‎‎ There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava
                                    0
                                  • petrakraft

                                    What's your best hidden SEO secret?

                                    Don't take that question too serious but all answers are welcome 😉 Answer to all:
                                    "Gentlemen, I see you did you best - at least I hope so! But after all I suppose I am stuck here to go on reading the SEOmoz blog if I can't sqeeze more secrets from you!

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petrakraft
                                    9

                                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                  Start my free trial
                                  Products
                                  • Moz Pro
                                  • Moz Local
                                  • Moz API
                                  • Moz Data
                                  • STAT
                                  • Product Updates
                                  Moz Solutions
                                  • SMB Solutions
                                  • Agency Solutions
                                  • Enterprise Solutions
                                  • Digital Marketers
                                  Free SEO Tools
                                  • Domain Authority Checker
                                  • Link Explorer
                                  • Keyword Explorer
                                  • Competitive Research
                                  • Brand Authority Checker
                                  • Local Citation Checker
                                  • MozBar Extension
                                  • MozCast
                                  Resources
                                  • Blog
                                  • SEO Learning Center
                                  • Help Hub
                                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                  • How-to Guides
                                  • Moz Academy
                                  • API Docs
                                  About Moz
                                  • About
                                  • Team
                                  • Careers
                                  • Contact
                                  Why Moz
                                  • Case Studies
                                  • Testimonials
                                  Get Involved
                                  • Become an Affiliate
                                  • MozCon
                                  • Webinars
                                  • Practical Marketer Series
                                  • MozPod
                                  Connect with us

                                  Contact the Help team

                                  Join our newsletter
                                  Moz logo
                                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                  • Accessibility
                                  • Terms of Use
                                  • Privacy

                                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.