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    4. 301 redirect with /? in URL

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    301 redirect with /? in URL

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    • COEDMediaGroup
      COEDMediaGroup last edited by

      For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the /

      For example how to take this URL

      domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner

      and 301 to this URL

      domain.com/article-name/

      Thank you for the help

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Aleyda
        Aleyda @COEDMediaGroup last edited by

        Hi Robert,

        The rewrite rules shared by Patrick should work well for that although you could also use Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin that features options to do that through the control panel.

        Nonetheless, in general what can be better in performance and also for tracking purposes with your site URL, leaving tracking parameters while avoiding content duplication content is to use canonical tags. You can also set them easily for Wordpress with Yoast's plugin.

        I hope this helps!

        Aleyda

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • AmberRobinson
          AmberRobinson last edited by

          Have you tried the Redirection tool when you login to the back-end of the site?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • COEDMediaGroup
            COEDMediaGroup last edited by

            Just looking to remove it. Thanks for the info, will see if this works.

            Aleyda 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • StreamlineMetrics
              StreamlineMetrics last edited by

              Do you want to capture the parameter value or do you want to just remove it immediately? If you want to remove it without worrying about capturing the value in Google Analytics, then this code may work -

              RewriteEngine On
              RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !="" #if there is a query string
              RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^p=.* #wordpress users: allow post tempalinks
              RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin.* #wordpress users: don't break admin
              RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [R=301,L] #remove query string

              I got this code from http://briancray.com/posts/htaccess-hack-remove-url-query-strings/

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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