• 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
        8749
        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

                                  • jagdecat

                                    I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?

                                    I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404. Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jagdecat
                                    0
                                  • CoGri

                                    How to migrate from an asp.net to wordpress without loosing domain authority?

                                    I would like to migrate my current website, which is asp.net, to WordPress. However the current asp.net is sitting on hosting which is windows based and WordPress isn't very compatible. Do I need to migrate hosting to a Linux based hosting provider? But if I do can I still migrate the asp.net files from my current website so I can 301 redirect? Any help on this would be great. Regards, Tom

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoGri
                                    0
                                  • JakubH

                                    Lost 86% of traffic after moving old static site to WordPress

                                    I hired a company to convert an old static website www.rawfoodexplained.com with about 1200 pages of content to WordPress. Four days after launch it lost almost 90% of traffic. It was getting over 60,000 uniques while nobody touched the site for several years. It’s been 21 days since the WordPress launch. I read a lot of stuff prior to moving it (including Moz's case study) and I was expecting to lose in short term 30% of traffic max… I don’t understand what is wrong. The internal link structure is the same, every url is 301 to the same url only without[dot]html (ie www.rawfoodexplained.com/science.html is 301′s to http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/science/ ), it’s added to Google Webmaster tool and Google indexed the new pages… Any ideas what could be possible wrong? I do understand the website is not optimized (meta descriptions etc, but it wasn't before either) .... Do you think putting back the old site would recover the traffic? I would appreciate any thoughts Thank you

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JakubH
                                    0
                                  • Tone_Agency

                                    Wordpress blog in a subdirectory not being indexed by Google

                                    HI MozzersIn my websites sitemap.xml, pages are listed, such as /blog/ and /blog/textile-fact-or-fiction-egyptian-cotton-explained/These pages are visible when you visit them in a browser and when you use the Google Webmaster tool - Fetch as Google to view them (see attachment), however they aren't being indexed in Google, not even the root directory for the blog (/blog/) is being indexed, and when we query:site: www.hilden.co.uk/blog/ It returns 0 results in Google.Also note that:The Wordpress installation is located at /blog/ which is a subdirectory of the main root directory which is managed by Magento. I'm wondering if this causing the problem.Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!AnthonyToTOHuj.png?1

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency
                                    0
                                  • KateV

                                    Does Google hate wordpress?

                                    I have my categories pages set to noindex, follow. I deactivated the author and date based archives, and all the /page/2 /page/3 are noindex. Is this the right approach? I had thought about adding some text to the topic of each category page and then changing them to index. I'm using showing recent post excerpts on the homepage. Another other suggestions? I think two of my sites are in panda for no good reason. It seems like non-wordpress blogs in my industry do better than comparable wordpress sites.

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateV
                                    0
                                  • Eric_R

                                    Removing Content 301 vs 410 question

                                    Hello, I was hoping to get the SEOmoz community’s advice on how to remove content most effectively from a large website. I just read a very thought-provoking thread in which Dr. Pete and Kerry22 answered a question about how to cut content in order to recover from Panda.  (http://www.seomoz.org/q/panda-recovery-what-is-the-best-way-to-shrink-your-index-and-make-google-aware). Kerry22 mentioned a process in which 410s would be totally visible to googlebot so that it would easily recognize the removal of content.  The conversation implied that it is not just important to remove the content, but also to give google the ability to recrawl that content to indeed confirm the content was removed (as opposed to just recrawling the site and not finding the content anywhere). This really made lots of sense to me and also struck a personal chord… Our website was hit by a later Panda refresh back in March 2012, and ever since then we have been aggressive about cutting content and doing what we can to improve user experience. When we cut pages, though, we used a different approach, doing all of the below steps:
                                    1. We cut the pages
                                    2. We set up permanent 301 redirects for all of them immediately.
                                    3. And at the same time, we would always remove from our site all links pointing to these pages (to make sure users didn’t stumble upon the removed pages. When we cut the content pages, we would either delete them or unpublish them, causing them to 404 or 401, but this is probably a moot point since we gave them 301 redirects every time anyway.  We thought we could signal to Google that we removed the content while avoiding generating lots of errors that way… I see that this is basically the exact opposite of Dr. Pete's advice and opposite what Kerry22 used in order to get a recovery, and meanwhile here we are still trying to help our site recover.  We've been feeling that our site should no longer be under the shadow of Panda. So here is what I'm wondering, and I'd be very appreciative of advice or answers for the following questions: 1. Is it possible that Google still thinks we have this content on our site, and we continue to suffer from Panda because of this?  
                                    Could there be a residual taint caused by the way we removed it, or is it all water under the bridge at this point because Google would have figured out we removed it (albeit not in a preferred way)? 2.  If there’s a possibility our former cutting process has caused lasting issues and affected how Google sees us, what can we do now (if anything) to correct the damage we did? Thank you in advance for your help,
                                    Eric

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
                                    1
                                  • BeytzNet

                                    Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?

                                    Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                                    0
                                  • alextanner

                                    Duplicate page titles Wordpress SEO/Yoast

                                    Hi I have a Wordpress site using the Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoast. Everything appears to be fine except that on 1 Feb SEOMoz crawl suddenly picked up a bunch of errors. The errors are duplicate page titles, and these exist only for the mysite.com/page/X pages. I can't find any setting in Yoast that looks wrong or tells me how to fix this. The pages are also dynamically canonicalizing to themselves - not sure if this makes any difference although I don't know how this is happening. Does anyone know how to fix this duplicate title error? Alex

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alextanner
                                    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.