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
-
Link juice through URL parameters
Hi guys, hope you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. Quick question re URL parameters, I understand that links which pass through an affiliate URL parameter aren't taken into consideration when passing link juice through one site to another. However, when a link contains a tracking URL parameter (let's say gclid=), does link juice get passed through? We have a number of external links pointing to our main site, however, they are linking directly to a unique tracking parameter. I'm just curious to know about this. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
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 -
Ranking on google but not Bing?
Any reason why I could be ranking for Google but not Bing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Bing flags multiple H1's as an issue of high importance--any case studies?
Going through Bing's SEO Analyzer and found that Bing thinks having multiple H1's on a page is an issue. It's going to be quite a bit of work to remove the H1 tags from various pages. Do you think this is a major issue or not? Does anyone know of any case studies / interviews to show that fixing this will lead to improvement?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Should I use both Google and Bing's Webmaster Tools at the same time?
Hi All, Up till now I've been registered only to Google WMT. Do you recommend using at the same time Bing's WMT? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
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 -
Query deserves freshness
There was an seomoz article - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/does-query-deserves-diversity-algorithm-exist-at-google . I would like to point out the specific part of it - "So - because a lot of searchers express a preference for more diverse results than just those pages that ordinarily would "make the cut," Google provides an extra helping hand to pages they feel help to satisfy those searchers. This data could be gleaned from lower CTRs in the SERPs, greater numbers of query refinements, and even a high percentage of related searches performed subsequently" I don;t understand how data could be gleaned from lower CTRs, don't you think it should have been Higher CTRs ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050