• majorAlexa

        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. How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google

        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.

        How to stop URLs that include query strings from being indexed by Google

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
        2
        2
        8261
        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.
        • McTaggart
          McTaggart last edited by

          Hello Mozzers

          Would you use rel=canonical, robots.txt, or Google Webmaster Tools to stop the search engines indexing URLs that include query strings/parameters. Or perhaps a combination?

          I guess it would be a good idea to stop the search engines crawling these URLs because the content they display will tend to be duplicate content  and of low value to users.

          I would be tempted to use a combination of canonicalization and robots.txt for every page I do not want crawled or indexed, yet perhaps Google Webmaster Tools is the best way to go / just as effective??? And I suppose some use meta robots tags too.

          Does Google take a position on being blocked from web pages.

          Thanks in advance, Luke

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

            WIthout a specific example, there are a couple of options here. I am going to assume that you have an ecommerce site where parameters are being used for sort functions on search results or different options on a given product.

            I know you may not be able to do this, but using parameters in this case is just a bad idea to start with. If you can (and I know this can be difficult) find a way to rework this so that your site functions without the use of parameters.

            You could use canonicals, but then Google would still be crawling all those pages and then go through the process of using the canonical link to find out what page is canonical. That is a big waste of Google's time. Why waste Googlebots time on crawling a bunch of pages that you do not want to have crawled anyway? I would rather Googlebot focus on crawling your most important pages.

            You can use the robots.txt file to stop Google from crawling sections of your site.  The only issue with this is that if some of your pages with a bunch of parameters in them are ranking, once you tell Google to stop crawling it, you would then lose traffic.

            It is not that Google does not "like" robot.txt to block them, or that they do not "like" the use of the canonical tag, it is just that there are directives that Google will follow in a certain way and so if not implemented correctly or in the wrong sequence can cause negative results because you have basically told Google to do something without fully understanding what will happen.

            Here is what I would do.  Long version for long term success

            1. Look at Google Analytics (or other Analytics) and Moz tools and see what pages are ranking and sending you traffic. Make note of your results.

            2. Think of the most simple way that you could organize your site that would be logical to your users and would allow Google to crawl every page you deem important. Creating a hierarchical sitemap is a good way to do this. How does this relate to what you found in #1.

            3. Rework your URL structure to reflect what you found in #2 without using parameters. If you have to use parameters, then make sure Google can crawl your basic sitemap without using any of the parameters. Use robots.txt to then block the crawling of any parameters on your site. You have now ensured that Google can crawl and will rank pages without parameters and you are not hiding any important pages or page information on a page that uses parameters.

            There are other reasons not to use parameters (e.g. easier for users remember, tend to be shorter, etc), so think about if you want to get rid of them.

            1. 301 redirect all your main traffic pages from the old URL structure to the new URL structure.  Show 404s for all the old pages including the ones with parameters.  That way all the good pages will move to the new URL structure and the bad ones will go away.

            Now, if you are stuck using parameters. I would do a variant of the above.  Still see if there are any important or well ranked pages that use parameters. Consider if there is a way to use the canonical on those pages to get Google to the right page to know what should rank. All the other pages I would use the noindex directive to get them out of the Google index, then later use robots to block Google crawling them.  You want to do this in sequence as if you block Google first, it will never see the noindex directive.

            Now, everything I said above is generally "correct" but depending on your situation, things may need to be tweaked. I hope the information I gave might help with you being able to work out the best options for what works for your site and your customers.

            Good luck!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 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

            • SEO1805

              Google Indexing Request - Typical Time to Complete?

              In Google Search Console, when you request the (re) indexing of a fetched page, what's the average amount of time it takes to re-index and does it vary that much from site to site or are manual re-index request put in a queue and served on a first come - first serve basis despite the site characteristics like domain/page authority?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO1805
              0
            • placementLabs

              How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?

              Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | placementLabs
              0
            • lcourse

              What is best practice for "Sorting" URLs to prevent indexing and for best link juice ?

              We are now introducing 5 links in all our category pages for different sorting options of category listings.
              The site has about 100.000 pages and with this change the number of URLs may go up to over 350.000 pages.
              Until now google is indexing well our site but I would like to prevent the "sorting URLS" leading to less complete crawling of our core pages, especially since we are planning further huge expansion of pages soon. Apart from blocking the paramter in the search console (which did not really work well for me in the past to prevent indexing) what do you suggest to minimize indexing of these URLs also taking into consideration link juice optimization? On a technical level the sorting is implemented in a way that the whole page is reloaded, for which may be better options as well.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
              0
            • Worthminer

              Why Google isn't indexing my images?

              Hello, on my fairly new website Worthminer.com I am noticing that Google is not indexing images from my sitemap. Already 560 images submitted and Google indexed only 3 of them. Altough there is more images indexed they are not indexing any new images, and I have no idea why. Posts, categories and other urls are indexing just fine, but images not. I am using Wordpress and for sitemaps Wordpress SEO by yoast. Am I missing something here? Why Google won't index my images? Thanks, I appreciate any help, David xv1GtwK.jpg

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Worthminer
              1
            • JDatSB

              Why are bit.ly links being indexed and ranked by Google?

              I did a quick search for "site:bit.ly" and it returns more than 10 million results. Given that bit.ly links are 301 redirects, why are they being indexed in Google and ranked according to their destination? I'm working on a similar project to bit.ly and I want to make sure I don't run into the same problem.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB
              1
            • Martin_S

              How do you de-index and prevent indexation of a whole domain?

              I have parts of an online portal displaying in SERPs which it definitely shouldn't be. It's due to thoughtless developers but I need to have the whole portal's domain de-indexed and prevented from future indexing. I'm not too tech savvy but how is this achieved? No index? Robots? thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_S
              0
            • udemy

              Disallowed Pages Still Showing Up in Google Index. What do we do?

              We recently disallowed a wide variety of pages for www.udemy.com which we do not want google indexing (e.g., /tags or /lectures). Basically we don't want to spread our link juice around to all these pages that are never going to rank. We want to keep it focused on our core pages which are for our courses. We've added them as disallows in robots.txt, but after 2-3 weeks google is still showing them in it's index. When we lookup "site: udemy.com", for example, Google currently shows ~650,000 pages indexed... when really it should only be showing ~5,000 pages indexed. As another example, if you search for "site:udemy.com/tag", google shows 129,000 results. We've definitely added "/tag" into our robots.txt properly, so this should not be happening... Google showed be showing 0 results. Any ideas re: how we get Google to pay attention and re-index our site properly?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | udemy
              0
            • CareerBliss

              Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes?

              We have a massive site that is having some issue being fully crawled due to some of our site architecture and linking. Is it possible to have a XML sitemap index point to other sitemap indexes rather than standalone XML sitemaps? Has anyone done this successfully? Based upon the description here: http://sitemaps.org/protocol.php#index it seems like it should be possible. Thanks in advance for your help!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss
              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.