SEO Effect Of "?" Parameters In URLs

[anand84]

Let's say there are two websites in a product-listings niche. Website A uses the URL format example.com/product/xyz to list each of their products. Website B has the format example.com/product?s=xyz to link to product XYZ.

Now, let's assume both websites contain same on-page optimization as well as external linking to each of the products xyz, abc,etc..

Do you see Website B having an advantage over Website A because of the way the URL is formatted? I am asking this because I think all links to independent products will be concentrated to the one URL example.com/product in Website B, but will be fragmented to the different independent URLs in the case of Website A.

Please let me know your thoughts.

[TheMadScientist]

No difference I know of or have heard of ... I would go with the 'pretty' one, but as far as links being counted correctly or not, there's no difference ... Google only says the following about query strings:

If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

[google.com...]
Maybe I'm not understanding the question?

[indyank]

? is not the same as #.

[The_Asking]

Its my understanding that where parameters can get you in trouble is when they create duplicate content. If no "dubs" then no problem. Personally I try not to use parameters because I feel some people are weary of anything after a ? and are less likely to include it in a link when referencing you site.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

IMO there would not be any advantage of choosing one format over the other.

[g1smd]

There are several advantages in not using paramters, as discussed part way through another thread: [webmasterworld.com...]

[TheMadScientist]

? is not the same as #.

No, it's not, at all, in fact they're basically opposites ... The 'English Version' is information after the ? is sent to the server as 'extra information' for the resource requested, while information after the # is basically 'browser information' and not ever sent to the server by a compliant user-agent.

[TheMadScientist]

I guess maybe looking to the source for answers to your question is best:

Should I try to make my dynamic URLs look static?
Following are some key points you should keep in mind while dealing with dynamic URLs:
1. It's quite hard to correctly create and maintain rewrites that change dynamic URLs to static-looking URLs.
2. It's much safer to serve us the original dynamic URL and let us handle the problem of detecting and avoiding problematic parameters.
3. If you want to rewrite your URL, please remove unnecessary parameters while maintaining a dynamic-looking URL.
4. If you want to serve a static URL instead of a dynamic URL you should create a static equivalent of your content.

Emphasis Theirs

One recommendation is to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

[DanAbbamont]

Eh, what about having readable URLs for users? What about the popularity of REST?

[indyank]

I am asking this because I think all links to independent products will be concentrated to the one URL example.com/product in Website B, but will be fragmented to the different independent URLs in the case of Website A.

@madscientist, my response was to the above assumption and in my opinion it is wrong.Dynamic urls doesn't ensure concentration of links to one url "example.com/product".

[TheMadScientist]

I have no idea what you're talking about?
Any difference in a URL is a difference in a URL.

A link here: example.com/product/xyz does not count as a link here: example.com/product any more than it would count as a link to anothersite.com/product/xyz ... A link counts to the URL it points to ... Period ... No discussion.

example.com/product/xyz
example.com/product/xy
example.com/product/
example.com/product/x
example.com/product

Those are all different URLs and links to each will count for each independently ... That's one of the reasons there is so much of a Good Reason to canonicalize example.com/product/ and example.com/product and www.example.com/product/ and www.example.com/product are all different URLs and links count to each independently.

Oh, I think I get it!
You're right, the assumption is wrong ... lol

[anand84]

Thank you all for your replies. Basically, I was doing a competitor analysis and found that in case of "product listings", one particular site grabbed all the top spots - ALL. And since other sites in the niche are equally big, I thought if this basic difference in URL formatting could be the reason why the site in question hit the jackpot.

Now that you have invalidated the assumption, I must probably go hunting for other clues about how this site got the top spots :)

[indyank]

@TheMadScientist

- I am seeing a strange crawl error report in webmaster tools for one of the sites affected by this panda.The report says that the following pages are not found.

http;//domain.tld/category/widget/page/3/ - 404 not found
http;//domain.tld/category/widget/page/7/ - 404 not found

and so on.

These pages never existed on the domain. When I look at the report for pages linking to them, I see a few other sub pages from the respective widget categories and they too never existed.

From where did the googlebots find them? Has anyone else experienced this?

[TheMadScientist]

That's interesting ... Are you doing any rewriting or do you have a similar file structure to the URLs being reported?

Off the top of my head, it almost sounds like rewriting gone wrong, maybe only for a few minutes and GBot picked some up or something?

[indyank]

The site uses wordpress and the rewriting had been defined once, that was 4 years ago.

[TheMadScientist]

I wouldn't be surprised if that's where they came from.

For future readers:
I would seriously consider following the advice given on the Google blog about not rewriting URLs, unless you really know what you are doing ... Some of the more advanced webmasters here really, really advocate it and will push you to do it, but I think for the average webmaster the advice given on the Google blog may well be better.

Should you canonicalize? Yes.
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/the-page.ext?the=query_string"> does the trick, no rewriting or changing anything to do with the handling of pages or any other 'fancy seo trick' is necessary.

Should you try to eliminate duplicate? Yes.
(That's what they mean on the blog by eliminating extra parameters.)

Do you need to have 'search engine friendly' URLs to rank? No, not according to Google, they actually say to leave them alone ... Obviously the advice may change at some point in time, but until it does, it might be best for most people to follow it.

Another SEO myth busted?

Whether it is or not it's doubtful if what Google says about their handling of URLs and not needing to change them will get passed around, because there's good money in convincing people things are wrong with their site for the people 'fixing' it...

[indyank]

The default urls in wordpess are not user friendly (I don't want to call it SE friendly) and almost all wordpress sites use pretty permalinks these days.

These kind of errors were never reported in 4 years of its existence.

[TheMadScientist]

IDK What happened with yours, then, and it could be a reporting error, but...

I've been playing with mod_rewrite for about 7 years and have a pretty good idea what I'm doing, but the more I think about the advice on the Google Blog and the more I think about the mistakes I made when I was starting out, and the more I think about how poor most of the mass-produced 'on-size-fits-all' code can be, unless someone has a 'site to waste' by making some big mistakes and time to play around, then imo it's best to follow the advice they gave, because when things work mod_rewrite and friendly URLs are great, but it's really easy to mess things up and do more harm than good, and imo they're just a 'selling point' as far as SEs and rankings go, and who on earth types in a WP URL, or a URL at all for that matter?

This is one of the few sites I'll type in a URL for and it's definitely an exception ... It might be the only one ... I'd bet there are still hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people daily who type a site name into Google or Bing just so they can click the link instead of typing it into the address bar ... I know a number of people who do this every time they visit a site, and when I've asked why, I get 'that's just how I get there...'żGo Figure?

Anyway, my posts aren't for you directly and maybe you know more about what you're doing than most or something, but there are quite a few people who read here and until they change their position over at Google, I think following their advice is probably what I'll stick with advising people, even if I'm fairly sure there will be some strong disagreement from others who post here...

[deadsea]

Having worked for some of the sites that started the "make dynamic urls look static" trend, I would agree that there are lots of pitfalls. 10 years ago, there were some pretty clear ranking advantages to making dynamic urls look static. Today, I'm not convinced that is the case.

The one thing that I will note that applies today: it appears that Googlebot prefers to crawl short urls before long urls. That is regardless of whether the url looks static or dynamic. But it is easier to make a static looking url shorter.

[aakk9999]

However, there are click-through advantages in making URLs short and static-looking.

But I do agree you need to know what you are doing, you need to test thoroughly, and one small mistake can result in chain reaction of mistakes.

[tedster]

http;//domain.tld/category/widget/page/7/ - 404 not found

Did you really mean to type a semicolon [;] and not a colon[:]? That would give us a different discussion.

[indyank]

Tedster, sorry.

I meant the colon[:]. Pls. correct it.