Should I disallow all URL query strings/parameters in Robots.txt?
-
Webmaster Tools correctly identifies the query strings/parameters used in my URLs, but still reports duplicate title tags and meta descriptions for the original URL and the versions with parameters. For example, Webmaster Tools would report duplicates for the following URLs, despite it correctly identifying the "cat_id" and "kw" parameters:
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?cat_id=87
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?kw=CROMAdditionally, theses pages have self-referential canonical tags, so I would think I'd be covered, but I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs, despite Webmaster Tools not reporting any errors.
As I see it, I have two options:
- Manually tell Google that these parameters have no effect on page content via the URL Parameters section in Webmaster Tools (in case Google is unable to automatically detect this, and I am being penalized as a result).
- Add "Disallow: *?" to hide all query/parameter URLs from Google. My concern here is that most backlinks include the parameters, and in some cases these parameter URLs outrank the original.
Any thoughts?
-
Correct. They won't be indexed but are still followed.
-
The statement was in a response to a question I asked earlier.
"I was having an issue like this where moz was showing a lot more duplicate content than webmaster tools was, actually webmaster tools showed none, but I was being penalized. I realized this when I added an exclusion to robots.txt to exclude any query strings on my site. After I did this I saw my rankings shoot through the roof."
Thanks for the info. I did edit the settings in the URL parameters section to tell Google that these parameters do not change the page content, so it should now index only one representative URL. My only concern was that the kw (keyword) parameter does change page content for search result pages, but I just read that Matt Cutts encourages disallowing those pages anyway.
Just to verify, disallowing those pages with parameters won't affect the "link juice" passed from external links?
-
Hi there
I recently answered a question in a similar question in the Q+A that references resources that can help you help Google understand these parameters and categorize them. You can read that here.
That being said, blocking these parameters in your robots.txt will not affect your rankings, especially if those parameter or query strings are properly canonicalized to the proper product page.
That being said, I would make sure you understand the resources above and the options, as you understand your users and website better than anyone - test on a few pages to see what happens and go from there.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
"I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs" - do you have a link for this?
Canonicals should be enough but Google does mess up and the more clues you can give them, the better.
You can also manually tell Google parameter meanings (if you check out your parameter page now in search console, you should see all of the parameters they've detected for you - you can just change their meaning).
I don't see any harm in disallowing parameters via robots.txt. They will still be crawled and internal links followed, just not indexed in serps.
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
-
Visibility for https://goo.gl/gJH7eh
Hi Mozzers, I am wondering if anyone can help me with the following. At the start of May this year we really lost visibility for the homepage of this site https://goo.gl/gJH7eh. This was particularly noticeable by tracking rankings for the term 'oak furniture'. We previously ranked on page 1 for the term 'oak furniture', but since May the homepage has struggled to make the top 100 positions for this term. We're confident that we have done everything within Google's guidelines, but it seems something is really holding the homepage back. The site ranks on page 1 for 'oak furniture' on Bing. The site had previously had a manual penalty for unnatural links (warning received several years ago). These links had a particular emphasis on using the anchor text 'oak furniture'. When we took over the site we did an extensive link clean up and disavow and managed to get the penalty removed at the end of October 2013. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OFS0 -
Revert to old domain w/ better DA/PA or stick with new one?
I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. The new domain is http://www.bohmkalish.com and the old domain was http://www.ssdlawcalifornia.com. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish1230 -
Duplicate content on .com .au and .de/europe/en. Would it be wise to move to .com?
This is the scenario: A webstore has evolved into 7 sites in 3 shops: example.com/northamerica example.de/europe example.de/europe/en example.de/europe/fr example.de/europe/es example.de/europe /it example.com.au .com/northamerica .de/europe/en and .com.au all have mostly the same content on them (all 3 are in english). What would be the best way to avoid duplicate content? An answer would be very much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO-Bas0 -
Massive URL blockage by robots.txt
Hello people, In May there has been a dramatic increase in blocked URLs by robots.txt, even though we don't have so many URLs or crawl errors. You can view the attachment to see how it went up. The thing is the company hasn't touched the text file since 2012. What might be causing the problem? Can this result any penalties? Can indexation be lowered because of this? ?di=1113766463681
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moneywise_test0 -
Robot.txt help
Hi, We have a blog that is killing our SEO. We need to Disallow Disallow: /Blog/?tag*
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio33
Disallow: /Blog/?page*
Disallow: /Blog/category/*
Disallow: /Blog/author/*
Disallow: /Blog/archive/*
Disallow: /Blog/Account/.
Disallow: /Blog/search*
Disallow: /Blog/search.aspx
Disallow: /Blog/error404.aspx
Disallow: /Blog/archive*
Disallow: /Blog/archive.aspx
Disallow: /Blog/sitemap.axd
Disallow: /Blog/post.aspx But Allow everything below /Blog/Post The disallow list seems to keep growing as we find issues. So rather than adding in to our Robot.txt all the areas to disallow. Is there a way to easily just say Allow /Blog/Post and ignore the rest. How do we do that in Robot.txt Thanks0 -
Issue with Robots.txt file blocking meta description
Hi, Can you please tell me why the following error is showing up in the serps for a website that was just re-launched 7 days ago with new pages (301 redirects are built in)? A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more. Once we noticed it yesterday, we made some changed to the file and removed the amount of items in the disallow list. Here is the current Robots.txt file: # XML Sitemap & Google News Feeds version 4.2 - http://status301.net/wordpress-plugins/xml-sitemap-feed/ Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap-news.xml User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-includes/ Other notes... the site was developed in WordPress and uses that followign plugins: WooCommerce All-in-One SEO Pack Google Analytics for WordPress XML Sitemap Google News Feeds Currently, in the SERPs, it keeps jumping back and forth between showing the meta description for the www domain and showing the error message (above). Originally, WP Super Cache was installed and has since been deactivated, removed from WP-config.php and deleted permanently. One other thing to note, we noticed yesterday that there was an old xml sitemap still on file, which we have since removed and resubmitted a new one via WMT. Also, the old pages are still showing up in the SERPs. Could it just be that this will take time, to review the new sitemap and re-index the new site? If so, what kind of timeframes are you seeing these days for the new pages to show up in SERPs? Days, weeks? Thanks, Erin ```
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiddenPeak0 -
Subdirectory URLs
If I have category pages for my site; is it better to use http://example.com/category/category or just http://example.com/category? Also, I'm creating a new section of the site; a resource center. Should the URLs of the pages in the resource center be http://example.com/learn/page or just http://example.com/page What are the reasons for the better choice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Should I robots block this directory?
There's about 43k pages indexed in this directory, and while helpful to end users, I don't see it being a great source of unique content for search engines. Would you robots block or meta noindex nofollow these pages in the /blissindex/ directory? ie. http://www.careerbliss.com/blissindex/petsmart-index-980481/ http://www.careerbliss.com/blissindex/att-index-1043730/ http://www.careerbliss.com/blissindex/facebook-index-996632/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0