URL Parameters
-
Hi Moz Community,
I'm working on a website that has URL parameters. After crawling the site, I've implemented canonical tags to all these URLs to prevent them from getting indexed by Google. However, today I've found out that Google has indexed plenty of URL parameters..
1-Some of these URLs has canonical tags yet they are still indexed and live.
2- Some can't be discovered through site crawling and they are result in 5xx server error.
Is there anything else that I can do (other than adding canonical tags) + how can I discover URL parameters indexed but not visible through site crawling?
Thanks in advance!
-
I'm also facing the same problem with my website pages. My Blackpods pro website pages don't show the exact permalink urls.
-
Hi there,
Thanks very much for your response. I checked the sitemap and there are no URL parameters listed - only the canonical URL listed on the sitemap.
If you have any other suggestions it'll be much appreciated.
Thank you!
-
Hi Rajesh,
Thank you for your response. I cannot share the website due to client's confidentiality but basically when I search to find a stockist {brand name}, Google lists similar URLs below on the first page. The pages are showing a list of stockists depending on the product availability:
1-website.com/find-stockist?model=10 (5xx status code)
2-website.com/find-stockist?model=11 (200 status code)
3-website.com/find-stockist?model=10 (5xx status code)
4-website.com/find-stockist?model=11 (200 status code)Thank you!
-
Hi Gaston,
Thanks very much for your time. The canonicals have implemented around a month ago and the pages are almost identical. I discovered all URL parameters without performing an advanced search.
Also, I come across the 5xx errors when I clicked indexed URL parameters on Google SERP and I cannot discover them when I crawl the site with Screaming Frog.
I'd appreciate if you have any other suggestions based on your experience!
Many thanks
-
Just so you know, if a URL results in a 5XX server error then it usually won't render your canonical tag to begin with! You might want to check your sitemap XML, to check that it's not 'undoing' your canonical tags by feeding these URLs to Google. Indexation tags must be perfectly aligned with your sitemap XML, or you are sending Google mixed messages (e.g: a URL is in sitemap XML so Google should index it, but when it is crawled it contains a canonical tag citing itself as non-canonical, which is the opposite signal)
Everything which Gaston said is right on the money
-
I think you need to show some examples.
-
Hi there,
Its important to note that canonicals are a signal. Google can obey them if its algorithm considers that those pages are actually canonicals between each other.
In my experience, this does not happen immediately, it usually takes Google some time to figure out if the canonicalization is correct. Keep in mind that pages being canonicalized HAVE TO be nearly identical and refer to the same topic.
And on the indexation part, pages can be indexed and be shown only when you search for that specific URL or using any advanced search parameter (such as site:).
More information about canonicals
- Consolidate duplicate URLs - Google Search supportRegarding the second issue, if you refer to "site crawling" as what you do with an external tool, such as Screaming Frog or Moz, you are getting 5xx errors because that tool is making to many requests, try lowering its crawl frequency. I know for a fact that Screaming Frog allows you to do that.
But, unfortunately, I don't know any other way of discovering URL parameters in bulk but using an external tool.Hope it helps,
Best luck.
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
-
301 vs Canonical - With A Side of Partial URL Rewrite and Google URL Parameters-OH MY
Hi Everyone, I am in the middle of an SEO contract with a site that is partially HTML pages and the rest are PHP and part of an ecommerce system for digital delivery of college classes. I am working with a web developer that has worked with this site for many years. In the php pages, there are also 6 different parameters that are currently filtered by Google URL parameters in the old Google Search Console. When I came on board, part of the site was https and the remainder was not. Our first project was to move completely to https and it went well. 301 redirects were already in place from a few legacy sites they owned so the developer expanded the 301 redirects to move everything to https. Among those legacy sites is an old site that we don't want visible, but it is extensively linked to the new site and some of our top keywords are branded keywords that originated with that site. Developer says old site can go away, but people searching for it are still prevalent in search. Biggest part of this project is now to rewrite the dynamic urls of the product pages and the entry pages to the class pages. We attempted to use 301 redirects to redirect to the new url and prevent the draining of link juice. In the end, according to the developer, it just isn't going to be possible without losing all the existing link juice. So its lose all the link juice at once (a scary thought) or try canonicals. I am told canonicals would work - and we can switch to that. My questions are the following: 1. Does anyone know of a way that might make the 301's work with the URL rewrite? 2. With canonicals and Google parameters, are we safe to delete the parameters after we have ensures everything has a canonical url (parameter pages included)? 3. If we continue forward with 301's and lose all the existing links, since this only half of the pages in the site (if you don't count the parameter pages) and there are only a few links per page if that, how much of an impact would it have on the site and how can I avoid that impact? 4. Canonicals seem to be recommended heavily these days, would the canonical urls be a better way to go than sticking with 301's. Thank you all in advance for helping! I sincerely appreciate any insight you might have. Sue (aka Trudy)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TStorm1 -
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Duplicate Content with URL Parameters
Moz is picking up a large quantity of duplicate content, consists mainly of URL parameters like ,pricehigh & ,pricelow etc (for page sorting). Google has indexed a large number of the pages (not sure how many), not sure how many of them are ranking for search terms we need. I have added the parameters into Google Webmaster tools And set to 'let google decide', However Google still sees it as duplicate content. Is it a problem that we need to address? Or could it do more harm than good in trying to fix it? Has anyone had any experience? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Ecommerce SEO URL Structure Questions
| I am in the process of developing a new Magento ecommerce store. Take for instance this website is in the apparel industry and i have the following main categories. Clothing Shoes Accessories Beauty Sub categories for clothing would be: Dresses Pants jeans Tops Products would be: Kelly Maxi dresses What is the best SEO Structure for this? Main categories obviously: www.example.com/clothing Sub Categories:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney
www.example.com/clothing/dresses Or www.example.com/dresses (Zappos seem to pursue the second type) Products:
www.example.com/clothing/dresses/kelly-maxi-dresses/ Or www.example.com/kelly-maxi-dresses ? Which one would be the best way to structure your site? Also what about filters that available in category pages? Say if i were to filter by color. what would be the best URL? I am sure canonical tag is needed here. New to Ecommerce SEO so i need some guidance! |0 -
Optimal URLs for SEO and UX
We are considering restructuring the URL scheme on one of the websites we maintain. We have a few options. Currently news article URLs are as follows:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
http://domain.com/news/1234/article-title-name/ Download section URLs are as follows:
http://domain.com/downloads/files/1234/file-title-of-download-here/ Forum URLS:
http://forum.domain.com/forum/topic/1234/title-of-forum-topic-here/ We feel that these are a bit too long for both SEO and user experience. We want to remove as many directories from the URLs as possible. From experience, what do you recommend changing for the example URLs above? We have some ideas below...and we need to keep the ID in the URLs...however I know this is a little frustrating. Some ideas we have for news articles:
http://domain.com/news/article-title-shorter-1234
http://domain.com/article-title-shorter-n1234 Some ideas for the download pages:
http://domain.com/downloads/file-title-shorter-d1234
http://domain.com/downloads/files/file-title-shorter-1234
http://domain.com/file-title-shorter-d1234 Some ideas for the forum URLs:
http://forum.domain.com/topic-title-shorter-t1234
http://forum.domain.com/topic/topic-title-shorter-1234 What do you think of these suggestions? Any other URL ideas? Recommended URL length? The purpose of is question was to find the perfect URLs for the site we are working on; your thoughts, suggestions and tips are very much appreciated.0 -
URL Error or Penguin Penalty?
I am currently having a major panic as our website www.uksoccershop.com has been largely dropped from Google. We have not made any changes recently and I am not sure why this is happening, but having heard all sorts of horror stories of penguin update, I am fearing the worst. If you google "uksoccershop" you will see that the homepage does not rank. We previously ranked in the top 3 for "football shirts" but now we don't, although on page 2, 3 and 4 you will see one of our category pages ranking (this didn't used to happen). Some rankings are intact, but many have disappeared completely and in some cases been replaced by other pages on our site. I should point out our existing rankings have been consistently there for 5-6 years until today. I logged into webmaster tools and thankfully there is no warning message from Google about spam, etc, but what we do have is 35,000 URL errors for pages which are accessible. An example of this is: | URL: | http://www.uksoccershop.com/categories/5_295_327.html | | Error details In Sitemaps Linked from Last crawled: 6/20/12First detected: 6/15/12Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. Is it possible this is the cause of the issue (we are not currently sure why the URL's are being blocked) and if so, how severe is it and how recoverable?If that is unlikely to cause the issue, what would you recommend our next move is?All help is REALLY REALLY appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840 -
We are changing ?page= dynamic url's to /page/ static urls. Will this hurt the progress we have made with the pages using dynamic addresses?
Question about changing url from dynamic to static to improve SEO but concern about hurting progress made so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | h3counsel0 -
Expiring URL seo
a buddy of mine is running a niche job board and is having issues with expiring URLs. we ruled it out cuz a 301 is meant to be used when the content has moved to another page, or the page was replaced. We were thinking that we'd be just stacking duplicate content on old urls that would never be 'replaced'. Rather they have been removed and will never come back. So 410 is appropriate but maybe we overlooked something. any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | malachiii0