Does having '?search' in a URL affect the page quality?
-
In our Costume Themes category on our website, http://www.costumedirect.com.au/themes/, the links direct to search pages with URLs containing the term '?search'. For example, the 'Edward Scissorhands' link directs to http://www.costumedirect.com.au/search.php?search_query=edward. Will the question mark and 'search' in our URL affect the page quality and rankings? Thank you.
-
Google recommends blocking all Internal Search Results in the Robots.txt file. I suggest creating a product collection or category for Edward Scissorhands Themed Costumes and linking to that instead. This way you can customize the content on the page just as if it was any other category page.
-
Morning Li,
Like Umar said, It's properly not to detrimental again I would say best avoided if it could be removed, words in URLs are taken into account by search engines.
If the URL is: http://www.costumedirect.com.au/search.php?search_query=edward
The search engine will see something like this: costumedirect com au search search query edward
And it will try to match it with the search term used, so if you have unnecessary words the search term will become less relevant.
Sorry hope that isn't too much in-depth let me know if you need me to go into more detail or explain a little more.
All the best.
-
Hi Li,
It's a common problem in E-Commerce sites. Remember, Google crawls dynamic URLs so I wouldn't say it will deadly harm your page but yes that URL structure is not considered as SEO friendly and it carries some weigh to effect a bit.
So my recommendation is to go with SEO base friendly URLs and set a canonical tag that will tells the search engines to use the base version of the URL. That way you can still use dynamic URLs like http://www.costumedirect.com.au/search.php?search_query=edward to get your data, but the search engines will consider the basic version as the final.
Hope this helps!
Umar
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
-
Opinions On Resource-Page Linkbuilding
Hi, I'm just looking to get some opinions on resource-page linkbuilding. These are links you would gain from sites when you use the following type of search operators: "keyword" + inurl:links
Link Building | | Tomwindham
"keyword" + inurl:resources
"keyword" + "helpful links"
... and so on... What do you think Google's thoughts on this subject would be when a large portion of the pages returned are long lists of links - usually these will be the title of the page linked to as well as either a bare link or an anchor text link. In some instances a short description of the page linked to would also be there. Are these long-term links that will continue to be relevant and worth spending time on for linkbuilding, or are these going to be see by Google as lower-quality links and potentially unnatural ? For example, Google's page on link schemes states; "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" may violate their guidelines. Do you think that in some cases, resource pages may be seen as somewhat fitting this description? Thanks! [Edit] I have also found this comment from a Moz post 4 years ago, but cannot find any other reference to John commenting on resource pages: "A while back, someone asked John Mueller in a hangout about the benefits of getting a link on an outdated resource page and the answer was that if it is a link that never gets clicked on then it's probably not passing a lot of value."1 -
Who's going to Pubcon Las Vegas in October 2015? I'm looking to connect with programmers, seo and link building providers.
Hi Moz Members, We are heading to PubCon next month. We are a marketing agency looking to connect with providers that can help us service our clients with website development and seo. Please drop me a line at cwjteng@hotmail.com with your contact information and blurb about your company/services. Thanks! K
Link Building | | kjseo0 -
Does more product pages mean better rankings?
We've recently been told that one of reasons why our site doesnt rank as well as a particular competitors because they have much more product pages than us. We can see that they have better quality links, which we are working on improving, which we sort of understand can be helping them beat us, but we didn't think that they would be ranked higher just because of more products. They also do not have much interesting blog / content on site. So should our limited resources be focused on getting better links, better content, or increasing our depth of product range? Thanks all.
Link Building | | onwardsandupwards0 -
Too many on page links
Hi i'm new to MOZ, after sacking my SEO consultant due to the penguin update. My site position isn't fantastic right now for my national and local search terms 😞 The first problem i have is tackling too many on page links. I understand it should be 100 or less, unless users would benefit more. Looking at my links i have up to 200 on page links (which i know are not beneficial or user friendly). If i give you an example this page has 208 links: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/blog/page/3 Heres another one with 157 links: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/author/admin/page/2 Here's one that isn't associated with my blog that has 188 links: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/testimonials On average most pages excluding the blog have around 120 links per page and i know thats to do with my Nav Bar - which i will sort out. My question is: Because the majority of these high link pages are associated with my blog, will that affect my site SEO performance? If yes, does anyone have any suggestions as to how i can reduce the total links on each page within my blog? The more i blog, this number is only going to increase 😞 Im using wordpress. I was just wondering if any of these imports would help ? | Blogger | Install the Blogger importer to import posts, comments, and users from a Blogger blog. Blogroll | Install the blogroll importer to import links in OPML format. Categories and Tags Converter | Install the category/tag converter to convert existing categories to tags or tags to categories, selectively. LiveJournal | Install the LiveJournal importer to import posts from LiveJournal using their API. Movable Type and TypePad | Install the Movable Type importer to import posts and comments from a Movable Type or TypePad blog. RSS | Install the RSS importer to import posts from an RSS feed. Tumblr | Install the Tumblr importer to import posts & media from Tumblr using their API. WordPress | Install the WordPress importer to import posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags from a WordPress export file. | If anyone can help, i would very grateful.
Link Building | | Anthony19820 -
Having pages in the footer
Hello, I have a website , and some keywords that im targeting i want to create separate pages for, so i can have good quality content on there, but at the same time i dont really want to have those pages in my header menu, its just for the Search Engines to see the quality page, with a keywords im targeting. So can i just have those pages in my footer menu? whats your opinion on this ? Thanks
Link Building | | vlad_mezoz0 -
Ecommerce websites' SEO strategy
Hi, Can you please make a short list how to make ecommerce websites SEO strategy?
Link Building | | Netkreativ
I am working on ecommerce websites and I curiuos how You professional think this. Now I am: Optimizing the website Build few relavant links Regards, Misi0 -
Different Link Titles Linking to the same page
So I'm doing a lot of link building but my question is how do search engines treat different link titles to the same page. For example, my main page is www.musillawfirm.com If I have 20 links from 20 sites linking to it as Melbourne FL DUI Lawyer and 20 more linking as Melbourne FL immigration Lawyer and More linking as Cocoa FL DUI lawyer etc... what happens? Do the search engines just rank me higher for all the terms or would it be better to always just link to separate landing pages? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | musillawfirm0 -
Other than the homepage, what other pages need linkbuilding TLC?
With my linkbuilding efforts, I know what keywords I want to target but my homepage ranks for most of my keywords. The other pages were written and built for specific keywords, but do they need linkbuilding TLC? They don't rank in the SERPs much anyway (if not at all) and the homepage is by-far the strongest in the SERPs.
Link Building | | Bill4Time0