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.
Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?
-
Hello,
I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy.
eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/
eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/
etc...
I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective?
Kind Regs,
RB
-
Commas in the URL aren't necessarily at an SEO disadvantage. It might be a good idea to change them for better usability and better CTRs, but as Russ says, I don't think this is an urgent task.
-
I have never seen any evidence that commas are negative, however usability can often drive the social factors that may play more and more a role in the future. I wouldn't make it a priority to change those URLs now, but when the time comes (perhaps with a redesign of the website), it would be worth your while to go ahead and remove them.
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
-
Negative SEO & How long does it take for Google to disavow
Following on from a previous problem of 2 of our main pages completely dropping from index, we have discovered that 150+ spam, porn domains have been directed at our pages (sometime in the last 3-4 months, don't have an exact date). Does anyone have exerpeince on how long it may take Google to take noticed of a new disavow list? Any estimates would be very helpful in determining our next course of action.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vuly1 -
Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new. Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spiros.im0 -
Forwarded vanity domains, suddenly resolving to 404 with appended URL's ending in random 5 characters
We have several vanity domains that forward to various pages on our primary domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SS.Digital
e.g. www.vanity.com (301)--> www.mydomain.com/sub-page (200) These forwards have been in place for months or even years and have worked fine. As of yesterday, we have seen the following problem. We have made no changes in the forwarding settings. Now, inconsistently, they sometimes resolve and sometimes they do not. When we load the vanity URL with Chrome Dev Tools (Network Pane) open, it shows the following redirect chains, where xxxxx represents a random 5 character string of lower and upper case letters. (e.g. VGuTD) EXAMPLE:
www.vanity.com (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.vanity.com/xxxxx/xxxxx (302, Found) -->
www.mydomain.com/sub-page/xxxxx (404, Not Found) This is just one example, the amount of redirects, vary wildly. Sometimes there is only 1 redirect, sometimes there are as many as 5. Sometimes the request will ultimately resolve on the correct mydomain.com/sub-page, but usually it does not (as in the example above). We have cross-checked across every browser, device, private/non-private, cookies cleared, on and off of our network etc... This leads us to believe that it is not at the device or host level. Our Registrar is Godaddy. They have not encountered this issue before, and have no idea what this 5 character string is from. I tend to believe them because per our analytics, we have determined that this problem only started yesterday. Our primary question is, has anybody else encountered this problem either in the last couple days, or at any time in the past? We have come up with a solution that works to alleviate the problem, but to implement it across hundreds of vanity domains will take us an inordinate amount of time. Really hoping to fix the cause of the problem instead of just treating the symptom.0 -
Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's
An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
May know what's the meaning of these parameters in .htaccess?
Begin HackRepair.com Blacklist RewriteEngine on Abuse Agent Blocking RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [NC,OR]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esiow2013
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bolt\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bot\ mailto:[email protected] [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} CazoodleBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ChinaClaw [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Custo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Default\ Browser\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DIIbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} discobot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Download\ Demon [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^eCatch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ecxi [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EirGrabber [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailCollector [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailSiphon [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailWolf [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Express\ WebPictures [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ExtractorPro [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EyeNetIE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^FlashGet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetRight [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetWeb! [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go!Zilla [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go-Ahead-Got-It [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GrabNet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Grafula [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GT::WWW [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} heritrix [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^HMView [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTP::Lite [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTrack [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ia_archiver [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IDBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} id-search.org [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Stripper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Indy\ Library [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InterGET [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Internet\ Ninja [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InternetSeer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IRLbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ISC\ Systems\ iRc\ Search\ 2.1 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Java [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JetCar [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JOC\ Web\ Spider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^larbin [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^LeechFTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Link [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} LinksManager.com_bot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} linkwalker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} lwp-trivial [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mass\ Downloader [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Maxthon$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MFC_Tear_Sample [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^microsoft.url [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Microsoft\ URL\ Control [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MIDown\ tool [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mister\ PiX [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Missigua\ Locator [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.*Indy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mozilla.NEWT [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MSFrontPage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Navroad [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NearSite [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetAnts [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetSpider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Net\ Vampire [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetZIP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Nutch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Octopus [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Explorer [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Navigator [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PageGrabber [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} panscient.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Papa\ Foto [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pavuk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PECL::HTTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PeoplePal [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pcBrowser [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PHPCrawl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} PleaseCrawl [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^psbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^RealDownload [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ReGet [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Rippers\ 0 [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} SBIder [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SeaMonkey$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^sitecheck.internetseer.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SiteSnagger [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SmartDownload [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Snoopy [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Steeler [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperHTTP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Surfbot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^tAkeOut [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Teleport\ Pro [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Toata\ dragostea\ mea\ pentru\ diavola [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} URI::Fetch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} urllib [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} User-Agent [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^VoidEYE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Image\ Collector [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Web\ Sucker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} webalta [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebAuto [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^[Ww]eb[Bb]andit [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WebCollage [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebCopier [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebFetch [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebGo\ IS [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebLeacher [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebReaper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebSauger [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ eXtractor [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ Quester [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebStripper [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebWhacker [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebZIP [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Wells\ Search\ II [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WEP\ Search [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Wget [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Widow [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWW-Mechanize [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWWOFFLE [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} zermelo [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^(.)Zeus.Webster [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ZyBorg [NC]
RewriteRule ^. - [F,L] Abuse bot blocking rule end End HackRepair.com Blacklist1 -
Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!0 -
URL Shorteners. Are they SEO Friendly?
Do URL shortener services like bit.ly act as 301 redirects? I was thinking about utilizing one for longer query based URLs and didn't want to risk losing link juice. Thanks for the insight! Regards - Kyle
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc
I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
/aclk - No cd value
/search - No cd value
/url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!0