Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Moz Tools
    3. Moz Pro
    4. What is the best way to treat URLs ending in /?s=

    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=

    Moz Pro
    2
    2
    958
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Easigrass
      Easigrass last edited by

      Hi community, I'm going through the list of crawl errors visible in my MOZ dashboard and there's a few URLs ending in /?s=

      How should I treat these URLs? Redirects?

      Thanks for any help

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

        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-parameters

        Regards

        Nigel

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        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.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • ayrutd

          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 | | ayrutd
          1
        • Cart_generation

          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_generation
          1
        • CamperConnect14

          Best tools for an initial website health check?

          Hi,
          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!

          Moz Pro | | CamperConnect14
          0
        • johnny122

          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 | | johnny122
          0
        • r.nijkamp

          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:
          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 website

          Moz Pro | | r.nijkamp
          0
        • jonny512379

          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.
          If anyone could confirm if i can post "slightly adult" sites. Best Regards
          Jon

          Moz Pro | | jonny512379
          0
        • BlueprintMarketing

          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 | | BlueprintMarketing
          0
        • ssimburg

          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 | | ssimburg
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter

        Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.