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.
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
-
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.Smith0 -
Why is rel="canonical" pointing at a URL with parameters bad?
Context Our website has a large number of crawl issues stemming from duplicate page content (source: Moz). According to an SEO firm which recently audited our website, some amount of these crawl issues are due to URL parameter usage. They have recommended that we "make sure every page has a Rel Canonical tag that points to the non-parameter version of that URL…parameters should never appear in Canonical tags." Here's an example URL where we have parameters in our canonical tag... http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/ rel="canonical" href="http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/?pageSize=0&pageSizeBottom=0" /> Our website runs on IBM WebSphere v 7. Questions Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL? What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters? Any advice for correcting this? Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Gold1 -
URL Rewriting Best Practices
Hey Moz! I’m getting ready to implement URL rewrites on my website to improve site structure/URL readability. More specifically I want to: Improve our website structure by removing redundant directories. Replace underscores with dashes and remove file extensions for our URLs. Please see my example below: Old structure: http://www.widgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm New structure: https://www.widgets.com/commercial-widgets/small-blue-widget I've read several URL rewriting guides online, all of which seem to provide similar but overall different methods to do this. I'm looking for what's considered best practices to implement these rewrites. From what I understand, the most common method is to implement rewrites in our .htaccess file using mod_rewrite (which will find the old URLs and rewrite them according to the rewrites I implement). One question I can't seem to find a definitive answer to is when I implement the rewrite to remove file extensions/replace underscores with dashes in our URLs, do the webpage file names need to be edited to the new format? From what I understand the webpage file names must remain the same for the rewrites in the .htaccess to work. However, our internal links (including canonical links) must be changed to the new URL format. Can anyone shed light on this? Also, I'm aware that implementing URL rewriting improperly could negatively affect our SERP rankings. If I redirect our old website directory structure to our new structure using this rewrite, are my bases covered in regards to having the proper 301 redirects in place to not affect our rankings negatively? Please offer any advice/reliable guides to handle this properly. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Linking to URLs With Hash (#) in Them
How does link juice flow when linking to URLs with the hash tag in them? If I link to this page, which generates a pop-over on my homepage that gives info about my special offer, where will the link juice go to? homepage.com/#specialoffer Will the link juice go to the homepage? Will it go nowhere? Will it go to the hash URL above? I'd like to publish an annual/evergreen sort of offer that will generate lots of links. And instead of driving those links to homepage.com/offer, I was hoping to get that link juice to flow to the homepage, or maybe even a product page, instead. And just updating the pop over information each year as the offer changes. I've seen competitors do it this way but wanted to see what the community here things in terms of linking to URLs with the hash tag in them. Can also be a use case for using hash tags in URLs for tracking purposes maybe?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Double hyphen in URL - bad?
Instead of a URL such as domain.com/double-dash/ programming wants to use domain.com/double--dash/ for some reason that makes things easier for them. Would a double dash in the URL have a negative effect on the page ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Does having a ? on the end of your URL affect your SEO?
I have some redirects that were done with at "?" at the end of the URL to include google coding (i.e. you click on an adwords link and the google coding follows the redirected link). When there is not coding to follow the link just appears as "filename.html?". Will that affect us negatively SEO-wise? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoxBrock1 -
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 -
Strange URLs, how do I fix this?
I've just check Majestic and have seen around 50 links coming from one of my other sites. The links all look like this: http://www.dwww.mysite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
http://www.eee.mysite.com
http://www.w.mysite.com The site these links are coming from is a html site. Any ideas whats going on or a way to get rid of these urls? When I visit the strange URLs such as http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it shows the home page of http://www.mysite.com. Is there a way to redirect anything like this back to the home page?0