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.
Does having a ? on the end of your URL affect your SEO?
-
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.
-
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
)
-
That is a great answer. Parameters have caused some grief for me thank you!
-
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.
-
Nope
You may find this question from earlier today helpful -
http://moz.com/community/q/weird-back-link-showed-in-moz-crawl
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Does changing template for a wordpress site affect SEO
Hi I work for an Inventory Management Software company and we already have a WordPress site but I am currently working on re-designing of our WordPress site and in this process, we are looking for moving to a new template. I want to know what will be the impact on SEO performance while taking a shift to a new template.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cin7_Marketing0 -
Will changing category URLs on site hurt SEO?
Hi Moz Community, We're looking to replace some URLs on our Wordpress site and I want to make sure we won't hurt our SEO with the changes. The site is lushpalm.com When we originally launched our site we created pages (which are linked to in our main menu) to essentially display our categories. We did this as a workaround because we didn’t like the URL to have the word “category” in it. Now we would like to make some changes and we want to make sure we’re not going to hurt our SEO in any way by accidentally duplicating content or otherwise. We want to fix our structure and now link to our category pages from our main menu, BUT we want to change the URL of the category page so that it doesn’t have “category” in it, essentially renaming it the name of the page currently linked to in our main menu. So basically, the category lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips, would be renamed with the URL lushpalm.com/surf-trips and the current page that is at lushpalm.com/surf-trips would be therefore replaced. My questions are: If we did this, would that mean that the previous “lushpalm.com/category/surf-trips” would cease to exist? Or is there some imprint of that out on the web? And if it is then would it re-direct to the new page? Would replacing the current page URL with a category hurt our current SEO in any way? Would this change cause any duplicate pages somehow? Thanks so much for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaraLP1 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
SEO time
I wanto to be in the top of the google search. I am usiing a lot of SEO tools but... I have done it during one month. Do I have to wait more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlosZambrana0 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
Ending URLs in .html versus /
Hi there! Currently all the URLs on my website, even the home page, end it .html, such as http://www,consumerbase.com/index.html Is this bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
Is there any benefit to this? Should I remove it and just have them end with a forward slash?
If I 301 redirect the old .html URLs to the forward slash URLs, will I lose PA? Thanks!0 -
Strange URLs, how do I fix this?
I've just check Majestic and have seen around 50 links coming from one of my other sites. The links all look like this: http://www.dwww.mysite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
http://www.eee.mysite.com
http://www.w.mysite.com The site these links are coming from is a html site. Any ideas whats going on or a way to get rid of these urls? When I visit the strange URLs such as http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it shows the home page of http://www.mysite.com. Is there a way to redirect anything like this back to the home page?0