About Url Parameters

[elvang]

Hello everyone,
I have questions about a url. The urls that i have problem have * and c symbols.
1- what is the meaning of that asterix * in this link and how can i remove it?
2- c i found out this symbol is url parameter. And i decided to delete them because they were causing indexing problems. I clicked legacy tools (search console), url parameters and i added an additional url-prefix property to be able to use the legacy tools. It said "go to property" at the end. Later i reseted two url parameters that have been saved on Search console, legacy tools and reports, url parameters. I made this two days before. But they still can be seen in the links and it is like i didnt remove them. Besides they are still saved in search console.
How can i remove them? Thank you.

[not2easy]

You need to remove them from the URLs where they originate before you can eliminate these URL parameters. The URL Parameters tools in GSC only relate to how you want Google to handle those parameters. You cannot remove them by using GSC, you can only instruct Google to handle them as you prefer. Your URLs are generated on your site and that is where you need to make changes.

If you can use an example of the URLs you wish to alter then you can learn how to change those URLs. Using the format of https://example.com/page*.html (a copy of your URL using example.com for display) that shows the URL parameters you can get some help.

[NickMNS]

1- what is the meaning of that asterix * in this link and how can i remove it?

URL parameters are a means of communicating between the server application and the user's browser. For example on a widget page it tells the server that for this widget show it in blue, to which the server responds by returning a modified result where the widget is displayed in blue. So the meaning of the asterix is determined by the server application, removing the asterix from the URL by some kind of an Apache re-write could break the webpage.

Also URL parameters are key value pairs in the form of ?key=value&key1=value1, where the "?" indicates the start of parameters key is the key, "=" marks the end of the key and start of the value and value is the value "&" is the end of the value and the start of the next key. I'm not sure from the OP whether the asterix is a key or value, but I suspect the URL looks like:

?c=*

This would suggest that "c" is the key and the "*" is the value, which typically is a catchall, so display all possible value of "c", and this is likely canonical (the same as) to displaying the page without the parameter. But I'm speculating and the only way to know for sure is to talk to the developer that created the website.

As to GSC, if you want Google to ignore the parameters then use the tool, but this tells Google that all pages with the parameter are the same and only choose one. In which case, Google decides which page to show. If you want a more targeted approach, you can use a rel=canonical link tag that points to the exact page you would prefer that Google shows in search. There is still no guarantee with the rel=canonical but it has better odds of working in your favor.

[NickMNS]

Here is a better and more complete explanation of URL parameters and URLs in general.
[developer.mozilla.org...]

[elvang]

Thank you for your replies i got the main idea for url parameters.

[mack]

In very simple terms the first part of the parameter is describing it. The 2nd part is a value. a good example would be ?colour=red or ?pet=cat...

Very often however developers will use non-descriptive terms or just single letters that can make it more difficult to work out exactly what the parameter is. This is often done deliberately. ?u=something

In many cases, parameters are generated programmatically on the fly by whatever script is creating the page(s)

I would be a little concerned about ?c=* if you are using a database to store data. That sort of input should really be excluded from the string before querying the database by sanitising it.

Mack.