How to handle lots of URL parameters
-
Howdy mozzers
I'm hoping you can lend some advice. I'm dealing with a site now with loads of URL parameters. It's a vehicle dealership group which hosts its entire inventory from multiple locations on one page, sorted by parameters.
Example inventory URL: www.dealership.com/car-inventory.asp?pa=&ns=10&so=m&sor=DESC&ma=&mod=&mt=&yr=&bs=&pr=&t=used&ln=
Where pa (page no.); ns (number of vehicles shown); so (sort by condition); sor (sort order); ma (make); mod (model); yr (year); bs (body style); pr (price range); t (type - new, used, etc.); ln (location no.).
As you can imagine this generates a gazillion URLs (or slightly less). Any thoughts on best canonicalization options?
Thanks as always
-
Thanks a lot for this. That video couldn't have been more timely!
-
There's actually a tool inside of Google Webmaster Tools that lets you specify how they should handle crawling your URL parameters. It's under 'configuration -> url parameters'. It should tell you there if they are having any trouble to crawl your site or not, based on the parameters in your URL.
Google has actually just released a video about this topic today - and it would probably be worth reviewing as well:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/08/configuring-url-parameters-in-webmaster.html
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
-
Parked former company's url on top of my existing url and that URL is showing in SERPs for my top keywords
I have the URL from my former company parked on top of my existing URL. My top keywords are showing up with the old URL attached to the metadsecription of my existing URL. It was supposed to be 301 redirected instead of parked but my web developer insists this was the right way to do it and it will work itself out after google indexes the old URL out of existence. Are there any other options?
Technical SEO | | Joelabarre0 -
Handling Multiple Restaurants Under One Domain
We are working with a client that has 2 different restaurants. One has been established since 1938, the other was opened in late 2012. Currently, each site has its own domain name. From a marketing/branding perspective, we would like to make the customers [web visitors] of the established restaurant aware of the sister restaurant. To accomplish this, we are thinking about creating a landing page that links to each restaurant. To do this, we would need to purchase a brand new URL, and then place each restaurant in a separate sub folder of the new URL. The other thought is to have each site accessed from the main new URL [within sub folders] and also point each existing URL to the appropriate sub folder for each restaurant. We know there are some branding and marketing hurdles with this approach that we need to think through/work out. But, we are not sure how this would impact their SEO––and assume it will not be good. Any thoughts on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
How can I best handle parameters?
Thank you for your help in advance! I've read a ton of posts on this forum on this subject and while they've been super helpful I still don't feel entirely confident in what the right approach I should take it. Forgive my very obvious noob questions - I'm still learning! The problem: I am launching a site (coursereport.com) which will feature a directory of schools. The directory can be filtered by a handful of fields listed below. The URL for the schools directory will be coursereport.com/schools. The directory can be filtered by a number of fields listed here: Focus (ex: “Data Science”) Cost (ex: “$<5000”) City (ex: “Chicago”) State/Province (ex: “Illinois”) Country (ex: “Canada”) When a filter is applied to the directories page the CMS produces a new page with URLs like these: coursereport.com/schools?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago coursereport.com/schools?cost=$>5000&city=buffalo&state=newyork My questions: 1) Is the above parameter-based approach appropriate? I’ve seen other directory sites that take a different approach (below) that would transform my examples into more “normal” urls. coursereport.com/schools?focus=datascience&cost=$<5000&city=chicago VERSUS coursereport.com/schools/focus/datascience/cost/$<5000/city/chicago (no params at all) 2) Assuming I use either approach above isn't it likely that I will have duplicative content issues? Each filter does change on page content but there could be instance where 2 different URLs with different filters applied could produce identical content (ex: focus=datascience&city=chicago OR focus=datascience&state=illinois). Do I need to specify a canonical URL to solve for that case? I understand at a high level how rel=canonical works, but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what versions of the filtered results ought to be specified as the preferred versions. For example, would I just take all of the /schools?focus=X combinations and call that the canonical version within any filtered page that contained other additional parameters like cost or city? Should I be changing page titles for the unique filtered URLs? I read through a few google resources to try to better understand the how to best configure url params via webmaster tools. Is my best bet just to follow the advice on the article below and define the rules for each parameter there and not worry about using rel=canonical ? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687 An assortment of the other stuff I’ve read for reference: http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/seo-clean-urls http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3857-SEO-When-Product-Facets-and-Filters-Fail http://www.searchenginejournal.com/five-steps-to-seo-friendly-site-url-structure/59813/ http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/07/improved-handling-of-urls-with.html
Technical SEO | | alovallo0 -
Changing a blog url from subdomain to subfolder
I am abou to change my company blog from a subdomain (blog.mydomain.com) to a subfolder (mydomain.com/blog), from suggestions from this awesome community! Not only that though, because the current blog is on another server than the main site I have to move my blog between servers as well. This will be a big hassle for me, and means a big risk for errors as I don't have a clue what I am doing on the development part. Hint: I'm no developer. My blog is fairly new, having posted 18 blog posts so far. There is no major linking to or from the blog as it has been basically no activity on the blog. It has been fairly good optimized for SEO, with custom plugin settings for Wordpress SEO plugin and similar. Also followed advice from Rand regarding wordpress SEO. So I guess my question is: Would it be a big loss for me to just start over with a new blog on the subfolder domain? And move content over from the old blog manually (and then deleting the old one). Or would It be plain stupid taking that route? Thankfull for all help I can get!
Technical SEO | | danielpett0 -
3 URLS Being Created All For The Same Page
I use wordpress for my blog and for some reason it is creating triple urls for my pages. I am not sure it has always been like this or not. I just noticed it in the errors section of SEO Moz. http://www.kisswedding.com/blog/?gid=7&r=20 http://www.kisswedding.com/blog/ashley-and-daniels-rainy-day-diy-farm-wedding/?gid=7&r=20 http://www.kisswedding.com/blog/ashley-and-daniels-rainy-day-diy-farm-wedding/ It's all the exact same page. Is there something I can do in my settings to make this stop. I don't imagine this is good. Ya think....ha! I saw this is the SEO Moz error area for Missing Title Tags. Apparently the number has gone from 200 to 400 which is weird because I never gave my blog posts meta stuff and I haven't written 200 pages since SEO Moz's last crawl.
Technical SEO | | annasusmiles
Maybe I changed something on my blog settings without even knowing. I can't think for the life of me what that would be though. Thanks so much and I appreciate any help received. Edited to add: I added some plugins over the past week. Maybe it's one of these? Category Text Category SEO Meta Tags (just deactivated this one) PhotoSmash (also deactivated this one) Clicky for WordPress0 -
Importance of SEO Friendly URLs
Hey SEOZ! How important do you all think SEO friendly URLs are to SEO. Here is an example: Non: http://www.domain.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=2964 Friendly: http://www.domain.com/product_name_here.html I have always heard mixed reviews but did an experiment comparing results on the same domain and actually noticed quite a difference with the friendly ones. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 6thirty0 -
Changing url structure
We are an ecommerce site established in 2005 and currently have some great rankings. We are about to move away from our existing platform, actinic and move on to Magento. This will change all our url's. What are the steps we should be asking our web developers to follow in order to minimize the consequences of moving? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | LadyApollo0 -
Handling '?' in URLs.
Adios! (or something), I've noticed in my SEOMoz campaign that I am getting duplicate content warnings for URLs with extensions. For example: /login.php?action=lostpassword /login.php?action=register etc. What is the best way to deal with these type of URLs to avoid duplicate content penelties in search engines? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | craigycraig0