Parameter handling (where to find all parameters to handle)?
-
Google recently said they updated their parameter handling, but I was wondering what is the best way to know all of the parameters that need "handling"? Will Google Webmaster find them? Should the company know based on what is on their site? Thanks!
-
Yeah, Google generally will come across just about all of the parameters while indexing your site, but you can add parameters as well. When you log into Google Webmaster Tools, you should see a list of parameters when you go to the Site configuration > URL parameters page. They've given more options now that you can change for each parameters, beyond whether or not Google should ignore them. If you click Edit for a parameter, now you can set:
- Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? (Yes, No)
- How does this parameter affect page content? (Sorts, Narrows, Specifies, Translates, Paginates, Other)
- Which URLs with this parameter should Googlebot crawl? (Let Googlebot decide, Every URL, Only URLs with value ___, No URLs)
It will also show you sample URLs with the parameter to make it easier to figure out when these parameters appear, which is very useful, as sometimes you don't which pages have which parameters.
Google's help file for this can be found here.
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
-
Site:www.domainname.com - does not find homepage in Google (only inner pages - why?)
When I do a Google search on site:www.domainname.com, my clients homepage does not appear. Other inner pages do. The same thing happend a while ago and I did 'fetch by google' in Search Console. After that the homepage was indexed again when I did a site:www.domainname.com search. But now (2 weeks later), it's gone again. When I search on the brand name of the website in Google it does find the homepage. I don't know why it doesn't find the homepage when I do a site: search. Any ideas? [see images where you can see the problem] XTrDn 2doHF
Technical SEO | | robk1230 -
How to handle Moz reported Spam external links
I have noticed Spam external links linking to my website. I do not know who has handled these spam external links to my website. It looks like a Spam SEO my competitors did on my website. I believe my site was penalized by google with those spam link and lost it's visibility in search . How do I get rid off SPAM external links now?
Technical SEO | | LIVEASISSTINFO0 -
URL Parameters for Product Variation
Hey there Mozzers, So I have a website that uses URL Parameters for product variations. So for example when I am in the product "test" that product has 5 different variations. So the url is as followed /product/test /products/test?variant=10271886529 /products/test?variant=10271886530 etc. Does Google understand that this is the same page ? Does it automatically exclude the variable in the url?
Technical SEO | | AngelosS0 -
Similar pages: noindex or rel:canonical or disregard parameters?!
Hey all! We have a hotel booking website that has search results pages per destinations (e.g. hotels in NYC is dayguest.com/nyc). Pages are also generated for destinations depending on various parameters, that can be star rating, amenities, style of the properties, etc. (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc/4stars, dayguest.com/nyc/luggagestorage, dayguest.com/nyc/luxury, etc.). In general, all of these pages are very similar, as for example, there might be 10 hotels in NYC and all of them will offer luggage storage. Pages can be nearly identical. Come the problems of duplicate content and loss of juice by dilution. I was wondering what was the best practice in such a situation: should I just put all pages except the most important ones (e.g. dayguest.com/nyc) as noindex? Or set it as canonical page for all variations? Or in google webmaster tool ask google to disregard the URLs for various parameters? Or do something else altogether?! Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | Philoups0 -
Sort parameters and overly dynamic URLs
Howdy mozzers I have a car dealership site with an inventory page that allows users to specify dealer location, model, make, year, etc. with drop-down menus. Each new choice changes the URL parameters and unspecified categories appear as "...&model=&year=..." I've attended to the URL parameters in Webmaster Tools, and according to Google's new URL parameters video, it looks like they've got a handle on navigating the site. That said, I do get warnings in my seomoz crawls that these URLs are overly dynamic (there are up to 12 parameters per URL). How concerned should I be? How would the Moz community suggest handling this many parameters in my URLs? Thanks as always
Technical SEO | | jamesm5i0 -
How to find all the links to my site
hi i have been trying to find all the links that i have to my site http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk but i am not having any luck. I have used the open explorer but it is not showing all the links but when i go to my google webmaster page it shows me more pages than it does on the semoz tool. can anyone help me sort this out and find out exactly what links are going into my site many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Best way to handle different views of the same page?
Say I have a page: mydomain.com/page But I also have different views: /?sort=alpha /print-version /?session_ID=2892 etc. All same content, more or less. Should the subsequent pages have ROBOTS meta tag with noindex? Should I use canonical? Both? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock0 -
Handling '?' in URLs.
Adios! (or something), I've noticed in my SEOMoz campaign that I am getting duplicate content warnings for URLs with extensions. For example: /login.php?action=lostpassword /login.php?action=register etc. What is the best way to deal with these type of URLs to avoid duplicate content penelties in search engines? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | craigycraig0