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.
What is the best way to treat URLs ending in /?s=
-
-
Hi Alex
These are parameters that sit after the main URL and often include 'sort' 'page'. (They can also be created in some eCommerce pages as 'products' but these should be dealt with a mod-rewrite to show properly constructed URLs with category name and title). There are a number of ways with dealing with them:
1. Google search console - you have to be very careful messing with the rules in parameter handling but for some, this is the way.
- 'sort' then you can tell Google that it narrows the content on the page - you can then choose to let Googlebot decide or block the URLs - I often block them as they just create skinny and duplicate content.
- Pagination - 'page' you can tell Google that this paginates and then let Google decide. Look at rel/prev tag on those pages as well.
- Attributes - like size and colour - I generally block those as they just create skinny duplicates of main categories
- Others - like Catalog - it depends on what platform you use but there could be other parameters being created - I block most of them as they create useless URLs
2. Robots.txt
You can use this file to block the indexing of these pages depending on the parameter by excluding them from being followed by the search bots. Once again be very careful as you don't want to accidentally block indexing of useful areas the site.
https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt
3. Canonicals
If you are able a great way of dealing with attributes like size and colour is to canonicalize back to the non size specific URL - this is a great way of maintaining the link juice for those URLs which may otherwise be lost if you blocked them all together. You add a rel=canonical tag pointing to the non-parameter version.
https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
4. As a last resort you can 301 redirect them but frankly, if you have dealt with them properly you shouldn't have to. It's also bad practice to have live 301 redirects in the internal structure of a website. Best to use the correct URL.
There is more reading here:
https://moz.com/community/q/which-is-the-best-way-to-handle-query-parameters
https://moz.com/community/q/do-parameters-in-a-url-make-a-difference-from-an-seo-point-of-view
https://moz.com/community/q/how-do-i-deindex-url-parametersRegards
Nigel
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
-
Difference between urls and referring urls?
Sorry, nit new to this side of SEO We recently discovered we have over 200 critical crawler issues on our site (mainly 4xx) We exported the CSV and it shows both a URL link and a referring URL. Both lead to a 'page not found' so I have two questions? What is the difference between a URL and a referring URL? What is the best practice/how do we fix this issue? Is it one for our web developer? Appreciate the help.
Moz Pro | | ayrutd1 -
URL Length Issue
MOZ is telling me the URLs are too long. I did a little research and I found out that the length of the URLs is not really a serious problem. In fact, others recommend ignoring the situation. Even on their blog I found this explanation: "Shorter URLs are generally preferable. You do not need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, do not worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there's probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value. This is not a direct problem with Google or Bing - the search engines can process long URLs without much trouble. The issue, instead, lies with usability and user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to parse, copy and paste, share on social media, and embed, and while these may all add up to a fractional improvement in sharing or amplification, every tweet, like, share, pin, email, and link matters (either directly or, often, indirectly)." And yet, I have these questions: In this case, why do I get this error telling me that the urls are too long, and what are the best practices to get this out? Thank You
Moz Pro | | Cart_generation1 -
Best tools for an initial website health check?
Hi,
Moz Pro | | CamperConnect14
I'd like to offer free website health checks (basic audits) and am wondering what tools other people use for this? It would be good to use something that presents the data well. Moz is great but it gets expensive if I want to offer these to many businesses in the hope of taking on just a few as clients and doing a full manual audit for them. So far I've tried seositecheckup.com (just checks a single page though), metaforensics.io and mysiteauditor. Thanks!0 -
Noindex/nofollow on blog comments; is it good or bad ?
Hi, I changed the design of one my wordpress website at the beginning of the month. I also added a "facebook seo comments" plugin to rewrite facebook comments as normal comments. As most of the website comments are facebook comments, I went from 250 noindex/nofollow comments to 950; URL's are ?replytocom=4822 etc. Moz campaign noticed it and I'm asking myself : is it good to have comments in noindex/nofollow ? Should I do something about this ? Erwan.
Moz Pro | | johnny1220 -
Crawlers crawl weird long urls
I did a crawl start for the first time and i get many errors, but the weird fact is that the crawler tracks duplicate long, not existing urls. For example (to be clear): there is a page: www.website.com/dogs/dog.html but then it is continuing crawling:
Moz Pro | | r.nijkamp
www.website.com/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html what can I do about this? Screaming Frog gave me the same issue, so I know it's something with my website0 -
Site Explorer - No Data Available for this URL
Hi All I have just joined on the trial offer, im not sure if i can afford the monthly payments, but im hoping SEOmoz will show me that i also cannot afford to be without it! In my proses of learning this site and flicking through each section to see what things do. However when i enter my URL into Site Explorer i get the following message "No Data Available for this URL" My site should be crawl-able, so how do i get to see data for my site/s. I wont post my URL here, as the site has a slightly adult theme.
Moz Pro | | jonny512379
If anyone could confirm if i can post "slightly adult" sites. Best Regards
Jon0 -
I am looking for SEO tips specifically for magazine site's
I have a client who has a website that is based on a magazine. They make their money through advertisement I am primarily an inbound marketer I would be very grateful if anyone out there has any tips for a site that has been around for quite a while ( over 10 years) we are transforming the site from HTML into WordPress then hosting it with a fast managed WordPress host using CDN. I feel the lack of links is an obvious place to start however if there's anything specific to magazine based websites I would be more than grateful to hear your opinions. Thank you all in advance. Sincerely, Thomas von Zickell
Moz Pro | | BlueprintMarketing0 -
How do you guys/gals define a 'row?'
I have a question about calls to the API and how these are measured. I noticed that the URL Metrics calls allow a batch of multiple URLs. We're in a position where we need link data for multiple websites; can we request a single row of data with link information for multiple URLs, or do we need to request a unique row for each URL?
Moz Pro | | ssimburg0