Should I remove the ?replytocom variables in wordpress?
-
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!
-
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
?replytocom= replaced with #replytocom=
-
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 ?
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 !
-
Thanks Ryan! Have a great 4th of July!
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
Thanks for the kind words, I agree, he is a cutie. Will blocking those cause the comments not to be indexed though?
-
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!
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
-
Beta Site Removal best practices
Hi everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
We are doing a CMS migration and site redesign with some structural changes. Our temporarily Beta site (one of the staging environments and the only one that is not behind firewall) started appearing in search. Site got indexed before we added robots.txt due to dev error (at that time all pages were index,follow due to nature of beta site, it is a final stage that mirrors live site) As an remedy, we implemented robots.txt for beta version as : User-Agent: *
Disallow: / Removed beta form search for 90 days. Also, changed all pages to no index/no follow . Those blockers will be changed once code for beta get pushed into production. However, We already have all links redirected (301) from old site to new one. this will go in effect once migration starts (we will go live with completely redesigned site that is now in beta, in few days). After that, beta will be deleted completely and become 404 or 410. So the question is, should we delete beta site and simple make 404/410 without any redirects (site as is existed for only few days ). What is best thing to do, we don't want to hurt our SEO equity. Please let me know if you need more clarification. Thank you!0 -
Something happened within the last 2 weeks on our WordPress-hosted site that created "duplicates" by counting www.company.com/example and company.com/example (without the 'www.') as separate pages. Any idea what could have happened, and how to fix it?
Our website is running through WordPress. We've been running Moz for over a month now. Only recently, within the past 2 weeks, have we been alerted to over 100 duplicate pages. It appears something happened that created a duplicate of every single page on our site; "www.company.com/example" and "company.com/example." Again, according to our MOZ, this is a recent issue. I'm almost certain that prior to a couple of weeks ago, there existed both forms of the URL that directed to the same page without be counting as a duplicate. Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wzimmer0 -
Does removing large portion of content hurt overall website organic visibility?
Hi everyone, I am wondering if there are any negative SEO effects of removing mass amounts of content specifically in the situation I am about to describe. We have a website that is being converted into Wordpress, however, one particular section that contains a large portion of content (31 pages) have not been transferred over yet. We are very eager to launch the new Wordpress website for lead generation purposes and will gradually re-implement the content over time. From Google Analytics, these pages have not generated a significant amount of organic entrances (~7 ) in the last year. Furthermore, these pages do not contain any backlinks. I would like to know whether or not this would have an overal negative SEO impact on the website even if we 301/create a page for coming soon/310/404 these pages? My gut feeling is no, but I would like to make sure I am not missing anything. Thanks Moz community!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Snaptech_Marketing0 -
Duplicate Errors from Wordpress login redirects
I've some Duplicate issues showing up in Moz Analytics which are due to a Q&A plugin being used on a Wordpress website which prompts the user to login. There's a number of links looking like the one shown below, which lead to the login page: www.website.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.website.com%question%2.... What's the best way to deal with this? -- extra info: this is only showing up in Moz Analytics. Google Webmaster Tools reports no duplicates.. I'm guessing this is maybe down to the 'redirect_to' parameter being effective in grouping the URLs for Googlebot. currently the wplogin and consequent redirects are 'noindex, follow' - I cannot see where this is being generated from in wp-login.php to change this to nofollow (if this will solve it).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
WordPress site and Forum in Sub domain
I have a web site www.mydirectoyzzz.com (Eg site) instaled wordpress and directory theme on that. i wanna add forum to this web site phpbb or similar .so how can i use forum in main domain .wanna know how it works best for SEO www.mydirectoyzzz.com/forum or www.forum.mydirectoyzzz.com ? Adding forum to main site .is that harmful to main web site ? Looking for SEO Expert help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Yoast Wordpress not working
Hey everyone, In looking through my site and doing some Google searches of titles we've written, it appears that all the posts we're making aren't showing up in Google search results. Example: If i paste the title of this post Netflix CEO suggests partnership with HBO, but HBO quickly nixes the idea into Google, it does not pull our post. Given the uniqueness of the headline, it should pull up our website in SERPS, but it doesn't. My assumption is that this Yoast plugin simply isn't working, but I doubt it's Yoast's fault. The site is not set to private, so that's not the problem. I'm also noticing that my sites description isn't showing up either. Can anyone help me solve this problem, please?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ttb0 -
Removing hundreds of old product pages - Best process
Hi guys, I've got a site about discounts/specials etc. A few months ago we decided it might be useful to have shop specials in PDF documents "pulled" and put on the site individually so that people could find the specials easily. This resulted in over 2000 new pages being added to the site over a few weeks (there are lots of specials).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cashchampion
However, 2 things have happened: 1 - we have decided to go in another direction with the site and are no longer doing this
2 - the specials that were uploaded have now ended but the pages are still live Google has indexed these pages already. What would be the best way to "deal" with these pages? Do I just delete them, do I 301 them to the home page? PS the site is build on wordpress. Any ideas as I am at a complete loss. Thanks,
Marc0