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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      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
    8844
    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

                              • Kingalan1

                                Effect of Removing Footer Links In all Pages Except Home Page

                                Dear MOZ Community: In an effort to improve the user interface of our business website (a New York CIty commercial real estate agency) my designer eliminated a standardized footer containing links to about 20 pages. The new design maintains this footer on the home page, but all other pages (about 600 eliminate the footer). The new design does a very good job eliminating non essential items. Most of the changes remove or reduce the size of unnecessary design elements. The footer removal is the only change really effect the link structure. The new design is not launched yet. Hoping to receive some good advice from the MOZ community before proceeding My concern is that removing these links could have an adverse or unpredictable effect on ranking. Last Summer we launched a completely redesigned version of the site and our ranking collapsed for 3 months. However unlike the previous upgrade this modifications does not URL names, tags, text or any major element. Only major change is the footer removal. Some of the footer pages provide good (not critical) info for visitors. Note the footer will still appear on the home page but will be removed on the interior pages. Are we risking any detrimental ranking effect by removing this footer? Can we compensate by adding text links to these pages if the links from the footer are removed? Seems irregular to have a home page footer but no footer on the other pages. Are we inviting any downgrade, penalty, adverse SEO effect by implementing this? I very much like the new design but do not want to risk a fall in rank and traffic. Thanks for your input!!!
                                Alan

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
                                0
                              • monali123

                                How to detect a bad link and remove ?

                                As per google penguin, all the low quality back links are going to affect the website SERPS hugely. So, we need to find all the bad back links and then remove them one by one. What I would like to know is, what tool do you use to find all the bad back links ? And how do we know which is a bad back link or bad website, where our link should not be there ? Then what service what do you suggest for back links removal. I contacted LinkDelete.com and they quoted me 97$ for a month to remove all links in less than 3 weeks. 
                                Let me know, what you suggest.

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monali123
                                0
                              • weebro

                                Using WP All Import csv import plugin for wordpress to daily update products on large ecommerce site. Category naming and other issues.

                                We have just got an automated solution working to upload about 4000 products daily to our site. We get a CSV file from the wholesalers server each day and the way they have named products and categories is not ideal. Although most of the products remain the same (don't need to be over written) Some will go out of stock or prices may change etc. Problem is we have no control over the csv file so we need to keep the catagories they have given us. Might be able to create new catgories and have products listed under multiple categories? If anyone has used wp all import or has knoledge in this area please let me know. I have plenty more questions but this should start the ball rolling! Thanks in advance mozzers

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weebro
                                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
                              • deskstudio

                                How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content

                                I've  attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now  I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio
                                0
                              • BeTheBoss

                                Removing Dynamic "noindex" URL's from Index

                                6 months ago my clients site was overhauled and the user generated searches had an index tag on them. I switched that to noindex but didn't get it fast enough to avoid being 100's of pages indexed in Google. It's been months since switching to the noindex tag and the pages are still indexed. What would you recommend? Google crawls my site daily - but never the pages that I want removed from the index. I am trying to avoid submitting hundreds of these dynamic URL's to the removal tool in webmaster tools. Suggestions?

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeTheBoss
                                0
                              • digisavvy

                                There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?

                                Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy
                                0
                              • nicole.healthline

                                Robots.txt & url removal vs. noindex, follow?

                                When de-indexing pages from google, what are the pros & cons of each of the below two options: robots.txt & requesting url removal from google webmasters Use the noindex, follow meta tag on all doctor profile pages Keep the URLs in the Sitemap file so that Google will recrawl them and find the noindex meta tag make sure that they're not disallowed by the robots.txt file

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
                                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.