URL Variable Names

Which variable names or styles to use.

[crosenblum]

I have converted for one of my sites, to all search engine friendly urls.

Now there are some url variable data, that when google displays it, that i want to not show up. Like Affiliate ID's or Promotion Codes or user id's. Or even uuid's.

All my urls are like this

[mysite.com...]

product_id is essential in the link to show on google results.

But I never want promo_code to be on the url for google results.

Is there a specific variable name, I can use instead of promo_code to get google to rip it from the url?

I would prefer to stay using search engine friendly urls and variables. Because it just looks so much nicer and makes sure dynamic pages get indexed.

But I don't want unessential url variables to be displayed in google search results?

Or should I have split style? Essential Variables in search engine friendly format and non-essential in the old style?

[mysite.com...]

If there is no way to get them ripped from being displayed in results.

Should I do a re-direct to a page that doesn't have the non-essential url variables on the url? Or is it better to display a link on a blank page, in the hopes that google will follow that link.

Any ideas or thoughts are welcome.

[jdMorgan]

crosenblum,

How about robots.txt?

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /ecommerce/product_page.cfm/product_id/2400/promo_code

Alternately, you could generate a <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> tag for all promo code pages.

You could also redirect search engines from promo_code pages to static pages with relevant info on the products, but this would be a form of cloaking.

HTH,
Jim

[vincevincevince]

maybe (to shortcut it all) you could check the referrer, and if it's Google (or not one of the legitimate linkers with promocode) then throw away the promocode bit?

ie, let google index the promocodes, but only legitimate clicks (ie, not from google) will get the benefit?

otherwise, can you give a cookie with a 301 redirection header? hmmmmm, i've never tried it, but i think it should work (ie, give cookie with 301, sending to url without the promocode in it, google will index the endpoint url from the redirect, users who have used the original url will have the cookie....)

[crosenblum]

The problem with using robots, is that there are thousands of products.

I do want google and other spiders to index the pages. Just to eliminate certain url variables from being indexed.

[crosenblum]

if i change my urls to be more like

[mysite.com...]

can i rename the variable promo_code in anyway to get google to strip it from the link when it displays it?

[vincevincevince]

The answer is no, not unless you add a lot of padding variables (?null=""&null=""&null=""&null=""&null=""&null=""&promo_code=F3946)

http://www.mysite.com/ecommerce/product_page.cfm/product_id/2400?promo_code=F3946

If google crawls the page with the link on, then that page must necessarily be free for anyone to access at will.

Why do you want to stop people clicking links via google, that they could have freely clicked from another page on the web. You don't want the clicks? Google's traffic is somehow inferior?

[crosenblum]

When google indexes my site, I don't want the public link to include certain url variables.

So when it finds this page

[mysite.com...]

I want in the index to only have the link like this:

[mysite.com...]

I do not want certain url variables, and in this case promo_code to be in the url.

For example google, has been known to remove user_id named url variables from links, it indexes.

I just wanted to know what specific url variable names to use, to get google to strip them from the results it shows to everyone else?