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.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      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. Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?

    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.

    Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    15
    3273
    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.
    • Ria_
      Ria_ last edited by

      So I currently have approximately 1000 of these URLs indexed, when I only want roughly 100 of them.

      Let's say the URL is www.example.com/page.php?par1=ABC123=&par2=DEF456=&par3=GHI789=

      All the indexed URLs follow that same kinda format, but I only want to index the URLs that have a par1 of ABC (but that could be ABC123 or ABC456 or whatever). Using URL Parameters tool in Search Console, I can ask Googlebot to only crawl URLs with a specific value. But is there any way to get a partial match, using regex maybe?

      Am I wasting my time with Search Console, and should I just disallow any page.php without par1=ABC in robots.txt?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Andy.Drinkwater
        Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

        No problem 🙂

        Hope you get it sorted!

        -Andy

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Ria_
          Ria_ @DirkC last edited by

          Thank you! 😄

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Ria_
            Ria_ @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

            Haha, I think the train passed the station on that one. I would have realised eventually... XD

            Thanks for your help!

            Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • DirkC
              DirkC last edited by

              Don't forget that . & ? have a specific meaning within regex - if you want to use them for pattern matching you will have to escape them. Also be aware that not all bots are capable of interpreting regex in robots.txt - you might want to be more explicit on the user agent - only using regex for Google bot.

              User-agent: Googlebot

              #disallowing page.php and any parameters after it

              disallow: /page.php

              #but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC

              allow: page.php?par1=ABC

              Dirk

              Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Andy.Drinkwater
                Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

                Ah sorry I missed that bit!

                -Andy

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Andy.Drinkwater
                  Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

                  Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index.

                  The trouble with this is that if you disallow first, Google won't be able to crawl the page to act on the noindex. If you add a noindex flag, Google won't index them the next time it comes-a-crawling and then you will be good to disallow 🙂

                  I'm not actually sure of the best way for you to get the noindex in to the page header of those pages though.

                  -Andy

                  Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Ria_
                    Ria_ @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                    Yep, have done. (Briefly mentioned in my previous response.) Doesn't pass 😞

                    Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Ria_
                      Ria_ @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                      I thought so too, but according to Google the trailing wildcard is completely unnecessary, and only needs to be used mid-URL.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Ria_
                        Ria_ @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                        Hi Andy,

                        Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index. Didn't want to remove them before I've blocked Google from crawling them in case they get added back again next time Google comes a-crawling, as has happened before when I've simply removed a URL here and there. Does that make sense or am I getting myself mixed up here?

                        My other hack of a solution would be to check the URL in the page.php, and if URL includes par1=ABC then insert noindex meta tag. (Not sure if that would work well or not...)

                        Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                          Martijn_Scheijbeler @Ria_ last edited by

                          My guess would be that this line needs an * at the end.
                          Allow: /page.php?par1=ABC*

                          Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Andy.Drinkwater
                            Andy.Drinkwater @Ria_ last edited by

                            Sorry Martijn, just to jump in here for a second - Ria, you can test this via the Robots.txt testing tool in search console before going live to make sure it work.

                            -Andy

                            Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Ria_
                              Ria_ @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                              Hi Martijn, thanks for your response!

                              I'm currently looking at something like this...

                              **user-agent: *** #disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
                              disallow: /page.php #but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
                              allow: /page.php?par1=ABC

                              I would have thought that you could disallow things broadly like that and give an exception, as you can with files in disallowed folders. But it's not passing Google's robots.txt Tester.

                              One thing that's probably worth mentioning really is that there are only two variables that I want to allow of the par1 parameter. For example's sake, ABC123 and ABC456. So would need to be either a partial match or "this or that" kinda deal, disallowing everything else.

                              Andy.Drinkwater Martijn_Scheijbeler 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • Andy.Drinkwater
                                Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                                Hi Ria,

                                I have never tried regular expressions in this way, so I can't tell you if this would work or not.

                                However, If all 1000 of these URL's are already indexed, just disallowing access won't then remove them from Google. You would ideally be able to place a noindex tag on those pages and let Google act on them, then you will be good to disallow. I am pretty sure there is no option to noindex under the URL Parameter Tool.

                                I hope that makes sense?

                                -Andy

                                Ria_ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                                  Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                                  Hi Ria,

                                  What you could do, but it also depends on the rest of your structure is Disallow these urls based on the parameters (what you could do in a worst case scenario is that you would disallow all URLs and then put an exception Allow in there as well to make sure you still have the right URLs being indexed).

                                  Martijn.

                                  Ria_ 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

                                  • SearchStan

                                    Over-optimizing Internal Linking: Is this real and, if so, what's the happy medium?

                                    I have heard a lot about having a solid internal linking structure so that Google can easily discover pages and understand your page hierarchies and correlations and equity can be passed. Often, it's mentioned that it's good to have optimized anchor text, but not too optimized. You hear a lot of warnings about how over-optimization can be perceived as spammy: https://neilpatel.com/blog/avoid-over-optimizing/ But you also see posts and news like this saying that the internal link over-optimization warnings are unfounded or outdated:
                                    https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-internal-linking-overoptimization-penalty-27092.html So what's the tea? Is internal linking overoptimization a myth? If it's true, what's the tipping point? Does it have to be super invasive and keyword stuffy to negatively impact rankings? Or does simple light optimization of internal links on every page trigger this?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
                                    1
                                  • Corbec888

                                    How does educational organization schema interact with Google's knowledge graph?

                                    Hi there! I was just wondering if the granular options of the Organization schema, like Educational Organization (http://schema.org/EducationalOrganization) and CollegeOrUniversity (http://schema.org/CollegeOrUniversity) schema work the same when it comes to pulling data into the knowledge graph. I've typically always used the Organization schema for customers but was wondering if there are any drawbacks for going deep into the hierarchy of schema. Cheers 😄

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Corbec888
                                    0
                                  • McTaggart

                                    How old is 404 data from Google Search Console?

                                    I was wondering how old the 404 data from Google Search Console actually is? Does anyone know over what kind of timespan their site 404s data is compiled over? How long do the 404s tend to take to disappear from the Google Search Console, once they are fixed?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                                    0
                                  • pdrama231

                                    Should I Add Location to ALL of My Client's URLs?

                                    Hi Mozzers, My first Moz post! Yay! I'm excited to join the squad 🙂 My client is a full service entertainment company serving the Washington DC Metro area (DC, MD & VA) and offers a host of services for those wishing to throw events/parties. Think DJs for weddings, cool photo booths, ballroom lighting etc. I'm wondering what the right URL structure should be. I've noticed that some of our competitors do put DC area keywords in their URLs, but with the moves of SERPs to focus a lot more on quality over keyword density, I'm wondering if we should focus on location based keywords in traditional areas on page (e.g. title tags, headers, metas, content etc) instead of having keywords in the URLs alongside the traditional areas I just mentioned. So, on every product related page should we do something like: example.com/weddings/planners-washington-dc-md-va
                                    example.com/weddings/djs-washington-dc-md-va
                                    example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting-washington-dc-md-va OR example.com/weddings/planners
                                    example.com/weddings/djs
                                    example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting In both cases, we'd put the necessary location based keywords in the proper places on-page. If we follow the location-in-URL tactic, we'd use DC area terms in all subsequent product page URLs as well. Essentially, every page outside of the home page would have a location in it. Thoughts? Thank you!!

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pdrama231
                                    0
                                  • RosemaryB

                                    Is possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using Google Search Console?

                                    We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
                                    0
                                  • alrockn

                                    Chinese Sites Linking With Bizarre Keywords Creating 404's

                                    Just ran a link profile, and have noticed for the first time many spammy Chinese sites linking to my site with spammy keywords such as "Buy Nike" or "Get Viagra".  Making matters worse, they're linking to pages that are creating 404's. Can anybody explain what's going on, and what I can do?

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn
                                    0
                                  • PottyScotty

                                    Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea

                                    Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites.  Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities.  e.g. Stirling
                                    Stirling paintball
                                    Stirling Go Karting
                                    Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns.  At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive!  Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
                                    0
                                  • Romancing

                                    URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important

                                    Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn

                                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing
                                    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.