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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      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
    • 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
    8739
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    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

                              Got a burning SEO question?

                              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                              Start my free trial


                              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

                              • Mat_C

                                Robots.txt blocked internal resources Wordpress

                                Hi all, We've recently migrated a Wordpress website from staging to live, but the robots.txt was deleted.  I've created the following new one: User-agent: *
                                Allow: /
                                Disallow: /wp-admin/
                                Disallow: /wp-includes/
                                Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
                                Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
                                Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
                                Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php However, in the site audit on SemRush,  I now get the mention that a lot of pages have issues with blocked internal resources in robots.txt file. These blocked internal resources are all cached and minified css elements: links, images and scripts. Does this mean that Google won't crawl some parts of these pages with blocked resources correctly and thus won't be able to follow these links and index the images? In other words, is this any cause for concern regarding SEO? Of course I can change the robots.txt again, but will urls like https://example.com/wp-content/cache/minify/df983.js end up in the index? Thanks for your thoughts!

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
                                2
                              • gozmoz

                                Moving html site to wordpress and 301 redirect from index.htm to index.php or just www.example.com

                                I found page duplicate content when using Moz crawl tool, see below. http://www.example.com
                                Page Authority 40
                                Linking Root Domains 31
                                External Link Count 138
                                Internal Link Count 18
                                Status Code 200
                                1 duplicate http://www.example.com/index.htm
                                Page Authority 19
                                Linking Root Domains 1
                                External Link Count 0
                                Internal Link Count 15
                                Status Code 200
                                1 duplicate I have recently transfered my old html site to wordpress.
                                To keep the urls the same I am using a plugin which appends .htm at the end of each page. My old site home page was index.htm. I have created index.htm in wordpress as well but now there is a conflict of duplicate content. I am using latest post as my home page which is index.php Question 1.
                                Should I also use redirect 301 im htaccess file to transfer index.htm page authority (19) to www.example.com If yes, do I use
                                Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/index.php
                                or
                                Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com Question 2
                                Should I change my "Home" menu link to http://www.example.com instead of http://www.example.com/index.htm that would fix the duplicate content, as indx.htm does not exist anymore. Is there a better option? Thanks

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gozmoz
                                0
                              • WayneRooney

                                Wordpress Blog in 2 languages. How to SEO or structure it?

                                Hi Moz community, I have got a wordpress blog currently in the spanish language. I want to create the same blog content but in english version. (manually translate it to english instead of using translation service such as Google Translate). How should i structure the blog for SEO? How will it work? Any structure markups i should know about? Any examples? Thanks

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney
                                0
                              • jeremycabral

                                Wordpress Comments Pagination

                                Hi Mozzers What is your view on the following. Should you Paginate comments to increase page speed? If yes, at what # of comments would you begin pagination? (with the objective being decreasing page load times) Apply rel="canonical" back to the main article URL? eg: url/comment-page-1 => url noindex the comment pages? create a "View all" comments page? Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
                                J

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral
                                0
                              • trung.ngo

                                Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index

                                I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo
                                0
                              • Bryan_Loconto

                                When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?

                                What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto
                                0
                              • ENSO

                                Robots.txt is blocking Wordpress Pages from Googlebot?

                                I have a robots.txt file on my server, which I did not develop, it was done by the web designer at the company before me. Then there is a word press plugin that generates a robots.txt file. How Do I unblock all the wordpress pages from googlebot?

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO
                                0
                              • James77

                                Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc

                                I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
                                /aclk   - No cd value
                                /search - No cd value
                                /url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
                                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
                              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.