• patient-YD7EDz

        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.

          Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
          Moz Pro

          Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

          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

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
          Moz API

          Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

          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. Crazy long weird URLs... help

        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.

        Crazy long weird URLs... help

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        3
        10
        4204
        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.
        • JohnPeters
          JohnPeters last edited by

          I have a HTML website, mysite1.com, and I placed a link on the home page to another one of my sites, mysite2.com

          Today I checked the links to mysite2.com in Majestic and noticed 24 links coming from the mysite1.com instead of just one link.

          The URLs from mysite1.com that are showing in Majestic are like this

          mysite1.com/?epl=4donafvFK3fMXxZXMWQRQLodmPchoXCK5C7-kbBv_agkwlkJrZAoaSDVUlhqFmUqt0f8c2Q6jF6GO6DNMnbidqRsikriF-IEBEt5okmICLEB0FxP36GrsxoPGQ3SGBo1PVR7itDUA4CYmjypn5gi

          mysite1.com,was inherited from a friend and I believe that it was originally built in Frontpage.

          Can you tell me how I can get rid of these multiple links as I only want 1 showing from the home page

          Thanks in advance

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Andy.Drinkwater
            Andy.Drinkwater @JohnPeters last edited by

            I would need to see this to give you any real feedback on it John but general rule of thumb is if Google looked at these links, would they see and understand the reasoning for the links to be there?

            Andy

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

              I see what you mean. Well the links from the home page sites are going from sites that are for information purposes only, then link to the service provider recommended by that website.

              I wouldn't see anything wrong with this. There are 5 sites linking from the home page to my main site out of 120 backlinks. I presume that this doesnt look bad in Google's eyes

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Andy.Drinkwater
                Andy.Drinkwater @JohnPeters last edited by

                I can't really help you with the htaccess stuff John, but regarding links from the homepage to another external site, this has always been a questionable practice. Why would you want to direct someone to another site as soon as they got to your homepage? Google see this in a similar way.

                However, if there is a very good reason for the link to appear there and if it formed part of a good sentence with accurate anchor text and wasn't trying to push people there just to get traffic up, then I can see no harm - bit hard to judge without seeing though.

                Andy

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • JohnPeters
                  JohnPeters @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                  Hi Andy,

                  Thanks for helping out.

                  Can you tell me why you think home page links are bad? I actually started a question about this last week but didnt get many replys. Do you think getting home page links a bad thing to do?

                  Ive done some digging and found that when I go to mysite1.com in majestic and look at Pages, its showing all the long URLs that I found pointing to mysite2.com

                  So I guess that at some point in its life, these pages have been indexed by Google.

                  These URLs all start with a ? i.e. mysite1.com/?561796

                  So I am guessing the best way to solve this is to make all URLs that start with a /? be redirected to the root.

                  Unfortunetly I have no idea how to write this in the htaccess file

                  Andy.Drinkwater JohnPeters 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Andy.Drinkwater
                    Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                    First of all, be careful with off-site links from your homepage unless there is a very good reason for it. If there isn't, I would always no-follow it so Google doesn't see an unethical link.

                    With reagards what you are seeing in Majestic, when you hover over the link, what do you see? Is it just a normal HTML link or has it been completed another way?

                    Andy

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

                      Ok I have noticed that any URL with ? at the end shows the home page.

                      mysite1.com/? will show the home page

                      mysite1.com/?111 will show the home page

                      etc etc

                      So I guess I need to redirect anything with a ? to the home page using a 301.

                      Can someone tell me what the code will be to do that in the htaccess file?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • DeanAndrews
                        DeanAndrews @JohnPeters last edited by

                        Hi John

                        PM me if you like, I'll have a look for you. Promise not to repeat the domain name.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • JohnPeters
                          JohnPeters @DeanAndrews last edited by

                          Hi,

                          Unfortunately I cant do that on a public forum.

                          But I can tell you all the URLs look like the one Ive posted, loads of numbers etc.

                          It isnt a dynamic site so these actual URLs are not  live pages.

                          When you visit these URLs, they are just duplicates of the home page

                          Hope that helps a little

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

                            Hi John

                            Could you provide the address so we can look please. Would be making wild guesses else.

                            JohnPeters 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

                            • HappyJackJr

                              Help with facet URLs in Magento

                              Hi Guys, Wondering if I can get some technical help here... We have our site britishbraces.co.uk , built in Magento. As per eCommerce sites, we have paginated pages throughout. These have rel=next/prev implemented but not correctly ( as it is not in is it in ) - this fix is in process. Our canonicals are currently incorrect as far as I believe, as even when content is filtered, the canonical takes you back to the first page URL. For example, http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/x-style.html?ajaxcatalog=true&brand=380&max=51.19&min=31.19 Canonical to... http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/x-style.html Which I understand to be incorrect. As I want the coloured filtered pages to be indexed ( due to search volume for colour related queries ), but I don't want the price filtered pages to be indexed - I am unsure how to implement the solution? As I understand, because rel=next/prev implemented ( with no View All page ), the rel=canonical is not necessary as Google understands page 1 is the first page in the series. Therefore, once a user has filtered by colour, there should then be a canonical pointing to the coloured filter URL? ( e.g. /product/black ) But when a user filters by price, there should be noindex on those URLs ? Or can this be blocked in robots.txt prior? My head is a little confused here and I know we have an issue because our amount of indexed pages is increasing day by day but to no solution of the facet urls. Can anybody help - apologies in advance if I have confused the matter. Thanks

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HappyJackJr
                              0
                            • McTaggart

                              Image URLs - best practice

                              Hi - I'm assuming image URL best practice follows same principles as non image URLs (not too many files and so on) - I notice alot of web devs putting photos in subdomains, so wonder if I'm missing something (I usually avoid subdomains like the plague)!

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                              1
                            • friendoffood

                              Removing UpperCase URLs from Indexing

                              This search   -  site:www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix gives me this result from Google: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                              https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix
                              Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. and Google tells me there is another one, which is 'very simliar'.  When I click to see it I get: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                              https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Automotix
                              Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. This is because I recently changed my program to redirect all urls with uppercase in them to lower case, as it appears that all lowercase is strongly recommended. I assume that having 2 indexed urls for the same content dilutes link juice.  Can I safely remove all of my UpperCase indexed pages from Google without it affecting the indexing of the lower case urls?  And if, so what is the best way -- there are thousands.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                              0
                            • 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
                            • 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
                            • seoppc2012

                              Does Google index url with hashtags?

                              We are setting up some Jquery tabs in a page that will produce the same url with hashtags. For example: index.php#aboutus, index.php#ourguarantee, etc. We don't want that content to be crawled as we'd like to prevent duplicate content. Does Google normally crawl such urls or does it just ignore them? Thanks in advance.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoppc2012
                              0
                            • SEODinosaur

                              Changing a url from .html to .com

                              Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur
                              0
                            • AndreVanKets

                              Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?

                              Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
                              oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
                              oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
                              oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                              oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                              oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                              oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                              oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                              oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
                              1

                            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.