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
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • 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.

      • 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. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How to fix issues regarding URL parameters?

    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.

    How to fix issues regarding URL parameters?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    8
    2688
    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.
    • CommercePundit
      CommercePundit last edited by

      Today, I was reading help article for URL parameters by Google.

      http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1235687

      I come to know that, Google is giving value to URLs which ave parameters that change or determine the content of a page. There are too many pages in my website with similar value for Name, Price and Number of product. But, I have restricted all pages by Robots.txt with following syntax.

      URLs:
      http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name
      http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=price
      http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100

      Syntax in Robots.txt
      Disallow: /?dir=
      Disallow: /
      ?p=
      Disallow: /*?limit=

      Now, I am confuse. Which is best solution to get maximum benefits in SEO?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AlanMosley
        AlanMosley @CommercePundit last edited by

        No i dont think so, even if the thought they were duplicate, then they will pick one as the original. so one of them will rank.

        If you are still concerned use tha canonicall tag, rather them remove them from index

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CommercePundit
          CommercePundit @CommercePundit last edited by

          Your concern is that, Google will crawl following all pages. If I will not do any thing with those pages. Right?

          http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps

          http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100&p=2

          http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=60&p=2

          http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=40&p=2

          Now, my website is on 3rd page of Google for Discount Table Lamps keyword.

          I have fear that, If Google will crawl multiple pages with duplicate Title tag so it may mesh up current ranking for Discount Table Lamps keyword.

          What you think about it?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AlanMosley
            AlanMosley @CommercePundit last edited by

            If the content is different, then dont do anything, but if it is duplicate us ethe canonical tag.

            The meta tages are not a problem, you are not going to get flaged for that, it would be better if you could make them unique but this is a very small problem

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • CommercePundit
              CommercePundit @CommercePundit last edited by

              Will it really work? Because, both page have different content.

              http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps have 100 products and

              http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100&p=2 have different + unique 100 products.

              One another problem is regarding Meta info. Both page have same Meta info. If Google will index both pages so it may create warning message for duplicate Meta info across too many pages.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • AlanMosley
                AlanMosley @CommercePundit last edited by

                Thats the advice i gave you, put a canonical tag in the page

                rel="canonical" href="http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps"/>

                if google finds http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name

                it will know it5 is mean to be http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • CommercePundit
                  CommercePundit @AlanMosley last edited by

                  Honestly, I did not getting it. Because, I have read one help article about URL parameters by Google.

                  It shows me some different thing. Google suggested to use Google webmaster tools. But, I have restricted all dynamic pages by robots.txt.

                  So, I want to know best practice which may help me to gain my crawling and no of indexed pages.

                  AlanMosley CommercePundit 5 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • AlanMosley
                    AlanMosley last edited by

                    I would simplty put a rel canonical in the page point ing to the true URL. so SE's will see them as one page.

                    It is better to use cononical for the reasons in the google doc you posted, goolge may not pick the nest url to be the canonical, you should make that choice for them

                    CommercePundit 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

                    • Fubra

                      410 or 301 after URL update?

                      Hi there, A site i'm working on atm has a thousand "not found" errors on google console (of course, I'm sure there are thousands more it's not showing us!). The issue is a lot of them seem to come from a URL change. Damage has been done, the URLs have been changed and I can't stop that... but as you can imagine, i'm keen to fix as many as humanly possible. I don't want to go mad with 301s - but for external links in, this seems like the best solution? On the other hand, Google is reading internal links that simply aren't there anymore. Is it better to hunt down the new page and 301-it anyway? OR should I 410 and grit my teeth while google crawls and recrawls it, warning me that this page really doesn't exist? Essentially I guess I'm asking, how many 301s are too many and will affect our DA? And what's the best solution for dealing with mass 404 errors - many of which aren't attached or linked to from any other pages anymore? Thanks for any insights 🙂

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra
                      0
                    • CarolynSC

                      Does google ignore ? in url?

                      Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC
                      0
                    • Jonathan.Smith

                      Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?

                      I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith
                      0
                    • Solid_Gold

                      Why is rel="canonical" pointing at a URL with parameters bad?

                      Context Our website has a large number of crawl issues stemming from duplicate page content (source: Moz). According to an SEO firm which recently audited our website, some amount of these crawl issues are due to URL parameter usage. They have recommended that we "make sure every page has a Rel Canonical tag that points to the non-parameter version of that URL…parameters should never appear in Canonical tags." Here's an example URL where we have parameters in our canonical tag... http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/ rel="canonical" href="http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/?pageSize=0&pageSizeBottom=0" /> Our website runs on IBM WebSphere v 7. Questions Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL? What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters? Any advice for correcting this? Thanks for any help!

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Gold
                      1
                    • tomcraig86

                      Canonical URL & sitemap URL mismatch

                      Hi We're running a Magento store which doesn't have too much stock rotation. We've implemented a plugin that will allow us to give products custom canonical URLs (basically including the category slug, which is not possible through vanilla Magento). The sitemap feature doesn't pick up on these URLs, so we're submitting URLs to Google that are available and will serve content, but actually point to a longer URL via a canonical meta tag. The content is available at each URL and is near identical (all apart from the breadcrumbs) All instances of the page point to the same canonical URL We are using the longer URL in our internal architecture/link building to show this preference My questions are; Will this harm our visibility? Aside from editing the sitemap, are there any other signals we could give Google? Thanks

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig86
                      0
                    • MasonBaker

                      Product or Shop in URL

                      What do you think is better for seo and for sale, I am using woo-ecommerce for health products website. websitename.com/product/keyword OR websitename.com/shop/keyword

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MasonBaker
                      0
                    • kisen

                      Urls missing from product_cat sitemap

                      I'm using Yoast SEO plugin to generate XML sitemaps on my e-commerce site (woocommerce). I recently changed the category structure and now only 25 of about 75 product categories are included. Is there a way to manually include urls or what is the best way to have them all indexed in the sitemap?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen
                      0
                    • komeksimas

                      Where to put a page ID in a URL?

                      Hello, My company is going to change URLs to example.com/category or example.com/product. When we will change the URLs to product or category pages somehow we have to check whether the requested page is from category table in DB or from products table (this gives much speed to page load time). So we have to choose how to make the different product and category pages.
                      Programmers said that we need to insert id to URL. So the question is: Which is the better way to place an id to an URL? example.com/product-name?id=111 example.com/product-name/111 example.com/product_name-111 Or maybe we should use some other punctuation mark to separate id from product name? p.s. I have read Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs by Google and it still didn't answered which is the best for all of the pages. Somehow others solve this problem by typing only the names to the URL, but could anyone tell what that technology should be?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | komeksimas
                      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
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation 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
                    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.