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        4. Does having a ? on the end of your URL affect your SEO?

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        Does having a ? on the end of your URL affect your SEO?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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        • RoxBrock
          RoxBrock last edited by

          I have some redirects that were done with at "?" at the end of the URL to include google coding (i.e. you click on an adwords link and the google coding follows the redirected link). When there is not coding to follow the link just appears as "filename.html?". Will that affect us negatively SEO-wise?

          Thank you.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • vmialik
            vmialik last edited by

            Search engines and informed individuals are used to ?'s as like Takeshi said "query parameters" or "query variables". For everyone else it might look "questionable" (Sorry just had to say it 😉 )

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • polarking
              polarking @TakeshiYoung last edited by

              That is a great answer. Parameters have caused some grief for me thank you!

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

                The question mark and the values that follow are known as "query parameters" or "query variables", and they actually can impact your SEO. Google can look at the different variations of the URL, and index them as separate pages, leading to duplicate content.

                The easiest fix for this is to put a canonical tag in your header, so that Google knows the what the proper URL for the page is supposed to be. You can also tell Google to ignore specific query parameters in Google Webmaster Tools under Crawl > URL Parameters.

                polarking 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • GPainter
                  GPainter last edited by

                  Nope

                  You may find this question from earlier today helpful -

                  http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/weird-back-link-showed-in-moz-crawl

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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