• seohunters9

        See all notifications

        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.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          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.

          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
        • My Q&A
        • 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. Should I remove the ?replytocom variables in wordpress?

        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.

        Should I remove the ?replytocom variables in wordpress?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        5
        13
        8750
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • NoahsDad
          NoahsDad last edited by

          I'm using Yoast's wordpress plugin and there is an option to remove the replytocom variables. I'm curious what everyone's thoughts were on that, and if I should do it.

          Here's the site if you need to see it.

          Thanks!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • BlueprintMarketing
            BlueprintMarketing @NoahsDad last edited by

            Hey, guys, this is a very old post but because it might be useful to people in the future I thought I would update the URL that Ryan did a. great job posting but no longer goes to the correct place. No one can control what I third-party site changes there URL structure to rite?

            you can use this plug-in called

            https://infolific.com/technology/software-worth-using/real-time-find-and-replace-for-wordpress/#pro-version

            ?replytocom= replaced with #replytocom=

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

              Mine is not indexed in the Google Search, but in Google Webmasters and SEOmoz they showed the error !

              Should i remove those links via URL parameters ?

              https://www.google.co.in/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=inurl:replytocom+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.animhut.com%2F&oq=inurl:replytocom+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.animhut.com%2F&gs_l=serp.3...3014.5998.0.6281.12.12.0.0.0.0.105.1059.11j1.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.5.psy-ab._Cw8cbYn4UA&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=22e7cbac4256cbc1&biw=1536&bih=764&ion=1

              Not indexed, someone here told me some plugins are helping you, i have All-in seo plugin and removed the comluv plugin(for more spam in my blog). other plugins are like share social network  That's it.

              Any help for me and my blog will be much appreciated !

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

                Thanks Ryan! Have a great 4th of July! 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • RyanKent
                  RyanKent @NoahsDad last edited by

                  What do people not using this plug in do? I'm assuming not many people do this, right?

                  I presume they accept the WP default options. Our practice and understanding of SEO is what allows us to analyze and make decisions regarding tidbits such as the one you mentioned.

                  You think there is any benefit to doing it, or just one of those "hey why not" sort of things?

                  I do think there is a benefit. You are impacting a LOT of links. Every comment on your site. It may be a tiny 1% benefit type of thing, but the change applies site wide and will presumably be in place for years.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • NoahsDad
                    NoahsDad @NoahsDad last edited by

                    I''ll try to find the link where he talks about using pages instead of posts and share it. Curious to hear your thoughts on it.

                    I'll go ahead and select that option, thanks for your help. (On a side note, what do people not using this plug in do? I'm assuming not many people do this, right?)

                    You think there is any benefit to doing it, or just one of those "hey why not" sort of things?

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • RyanKent
                      RyanKent @NoahsDad last edited by

                      Regarding the new pages instead of posts idea, do you have a link to share?

                      Regarding the comment url, the page with the comment should be fully indexed either way. By changing the link, you are helping search engines better understand your site. The comment links do not represent a new page or new information.

                      Google clearly understands WP sites exceptionally well. I am confident you can choose various options and they will still understand those links represent comments. With that said, I would still go with Yoast on this one.

                      Actually, SEOmoz does it too. Take a look at their blog comments.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • NoahsDad
                        NoahsDad @NoahsDad last edited by

                        Thanks for taking the time to check into it. One I'm concerned with is how this will effect long tail seo / indexing of the comments. How will this effect my organic traffic? (will it hurt it?)

                        I don't see these sorts of pages coming up in google now, so I'm not sure what selecting that option does (and how it effects the site.)

                        Yoast does a few things different with his site, and I don't always follow his lead. For example he suggets making new pages instead of new posts for your blog posts. He's the only one I've ever heard say this, or do this. 🙂

                        BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • RyanKent
                          RyanKent @NoahsDad last edited by

                          I just took a look at Yoast's site and I now better understand the option to remove the variables. I recommend selecting that option. From the Yoast site:

                          method remove_reply_to_com [line 939]

                          string remove_reply_to_com( string $link)

                          Removes the ?replytocom variable from the link, replacing it with a #comment- <number>anchor.</number> Tags: access:   public Parameters: string   $link   The comment link as a string.

                          Example: http://yoast.com/user-contact-fields-wordpress/#comment-110294

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • NoahsDad
                            NoahsDad @RyanKent last edited by

                            hmm..thanks for the feedback. So do you suggest not blocking those? (and I'll message yoast also and see what his thoughts are.)

                            Thanks.

                            RyanKent NoahsDad 6 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • RyanKent
                              RyanKent last edited by

                              I understand the logic behind blocking removing the variables. They are a lot of extra links on the page which some webmasters might prefer to manage.

                              What I would prefer is to reform the link so it was something like: http://noahsdad.com/treadmill-training-progress#replytocom=22729

                              I am guessing the "respond" portion of the URL acts as if someone pressed the reply button which seems unnecessary. If someone clicks the link whether in search results or otherwise and is taken directly to the comment, they should be quite happy. If they wish to reply they can hit the reply button.

                              Google ignores anything after the # character in a URL. Therefore Google would see these as simply a link to the page which should already be indexed.

                              Perhaps you can ask Yoast about his thoughts.

                              NoahsDad 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • NoahsDad
                                NoahsDad @AgentsofValue last edited by

                                Thanks for the kind words, I agree, he is a cutie. 🙂 Will blocking those cause the comments not to be indexed though?

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

                                  Yup - removing those will save you the trouble of duplicate content - since Google by default is crawling those as different URLs.  By default, if you have comments enabled, there's a link at the bottom of posts with that parameter in the url (the same as the blog post url - see here ---> http://noahsdad.com/treadmill-training-progress/?replytocom=22729#respond ).

                                  Noah is cute!

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

                                  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

                                  • tnixis

                                    Is a Wordpress AMP plugin sufficient, or should we upgrade our WP theme to an AMP theme?

                                    Hello there,  our site is on a Flatsome Wordpress theme (which is responsive and does not support AMP), and we are currently using the AMP for Wordpress plugin on our blog and other content rich pages. My question is - is a plugin sufficient to make our pages AMP friendly? Or should we consider switching to a theme that is AMP enabled already? Thanks!
                                    Katie

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tnixis
                                    0
                                  • Kingalan1

                                    Removing Toxic Back Links Targeting Obscure URL or Image

                                    There are 2 or 3 URLs and one image file that dozens of toxic domains are linking to on our website. Some of these pages have hundreds of links from 4-5 domains. Rather than disavowing these links, would it make sense to simply break these links, change the URL that the link to and not create a redirect? It seems like this would be a sure fire way to get rid of these links. Any downside to this approach? Thanks, 
                                    Alan

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
                                    1
                                  • Taiger

                                    Redirect wordpress from /%post_id%/%postname%/ to /blog/%postname%/

                                    Hi what is the code to redirect wordpress blog from site.com/%post_id%/%postname%/   to site.com/blog/%postname%/ We are moving the site to a new server and new url structure. Thanks in advance

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger
                                    0
                                  • ioannisa

                                    Mass Removal Request from Google Index

                                    Hi, I am trying to cleanse a news website.  When this website was first made, the people that set it up copied all kinds of articles they had as a newspaper, including tests, internal communication, and drafts.  This site has lots of junk, but this kind of junk was on the initial backup, aka before 1st-June-2012.  So, removing all mixed content prior to that date, we can have pure articles starting June 1st, 2012! Therefore My dynamic sitemap now contains only articles with release date between 1st-June-2012 and now Any article that has release date prior to 1st-June-2012 returns a custom 404 page with "noindex" metatag, instead of the actual content of the article. The question is how I can remove from the google index all this junk as fast as possible that is not on the site anymore, but still appears in google results? I know that for individual URLs I need to request removal from this link
                                    https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals The problem is doing this in bulk, as there are tens of thousands of URLs I want to remove.  Should I put the articles back to the sitemap so the search engines crawl the sitemap and see all the 404?  I believe this is very wrong.  As far as I know this will cause problems because search engines will try to access non existent content that is declared as existent by the sitemap, and return errors on the webmasters tools. Should I submit a DELETED ITEMS SITEMAP using the <expires>tag? I think this is for custom search engines only, and not for the generic google search engine.
                                    https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/indexing#on-demand-indexing</expires> The site unfortunatelly doesn't use any kind of "folder" hierarchy in its URLs, but instead the ugly GET params, and a kind of folder based pattern is impossible since all articles (removed junk and actual articles) are of the form:
                                    http://www.example.com/docid=123456 So, how can I bulk remove from the google index all the junk... relatively fast?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ioannisa
                                    0
                                  • SharieBags

                                    How Do You Remove Video Thumbnails From Google Search Result Pages?

                                    This is going to be a long question, but, in a nutshell, I am asking if anyone knows how to remove video thumbnails from Google's search result pages? We have had video thumbnails show up next to many of our organic listings in Google's search result pages for several months.  To be clear, these are organic listings for our site, not results from performing a video search.  When you click on the thumbnail or our listing title, you go to the same page on our site - a list of products or the product page. Although it was initially believed that these thumbnails drew the eye to our listings and that we would receive more traffic, we are actually seeing severe year over year declines in traffic to our category pages with thumbnails vs. category pages without thumbnails (where average rank remained relatively constant). We believe this decline is due to several things: An old date stamp that makes our listing look outdated (despite the fact that we can prove Google has spidered and updated their cache of these pages as recent as 2 days ago).  We have no idea where Google is getting this datestamp from. An unrelated thumbnail to the page title, etc. - sometimes a picture of a man's face when the category is for women's handbags A difference in intent - user intends to shop or browse, not watch a video.  They skip our listing because it looks like a video even though both the thumbnail and our listing click through to a category page of products. So we want to remove these video thumbnails from Google's search results without removing our pages from the index.  Does anyone know how to do this? We believed that this connection between category page and video was happening in our video sitemap.  We have removed all reference to video and category pages in the sitemap.  After making this change and resubmitting the sitemap in Webmaster Tools, we have not seen any changes in the search results (it's been over 2 weeks). I've been reading and it appears many believe that Google can identify video embedded in pages.  That makes sense.  We can certainly remove videos from our category pages to truly remove the connection between category page URL and video thumbnail.  However, I don't believe this is enough because in some cases you can find video thumbnails next to listings where the page has not had a video thumbnail in months (example: search for "leather handbags" and find www.ebags.com/category/handbags/m/leather - that video does not exist on that page and has not for months.  Similarly, do a search for "handbags" and find www.ebags.com/department/handbags.  That video has not been on that page since 2010. Any ideas?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharieBags
                                    0
                                  • BeTheBoss

                                    Removing Dynamic "noindex" URL's from Index

                                    6 months ago my clients site was overhauled and the user generated searches had an index tag on them. I switched that to noindex but didn't get it fast enough to avoid being 100's of pages indexed in Google. It's been months since switching to the noindex tag and the pages are still indexed. What would you recommend? Google crawls my site daily - but never the pages that I want removed from the index. I am trying to avoid submitting hundreds of these dynamic URL's to the removal tool in webmaster tools. Suggestions?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeTheBoss
                                    0
                                  • Paul78

                                    Removed Site-wide links

                                    Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul78
                                    0
                                  • pano

                                    Removing dashes in our URLs?

                                    Hi Forum, Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page. Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly) Thanks for your input.

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano
                                    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.