What is newsid in URL and How to Stop it

[rcodabas]

I am having lots of duplicate meta descriptions and title tags on HTML Improvements sections of GSC. The cause is multiple URL generated by WP with newsid strings such as:

/page/199/?newsid=http%253A%252F%252Fmywebsite.com
/page/199/?newsid=http%3A%2F%2Fmywebsite.com%2post_content%2F

How can I stop WP from generating URL's with "newsid"?

[keyplyr]

Looks like a parameter being used by some site. Might just be citing your site as the source of information, or could be used in a backlink to your site. It's not necessarily a negative thing. You need to investigate.

To block it, find out where it's coming from and block by domain, or by UA or by IP: Blocking Methods [webmasterworld.com]

[rcodabas]

Thanks Keyplyr, this newsid thing is growing daily. I think it has something to do with a Chinese search engine, which is generating thousands of inbound links to my site.

[keyplyr]

Use your raw server logs.

What UAs are they? Do they look like normal browsers or a Bot?

Follow the behavior from the UAs arriving by these links. What are they doing? Are they loading more than one page?

Look up the IP address. Is it Baidu, Sogou?

[phranque]

if those aren't your parameters and especially if they don't affect the content of the page, you should redirect all those requests with a 301 status code to the url without the query string.

[keyplyr]

Redirects in a WordPress htaccess are a PITA. If they aren't causing any problem, I'd ignore them.

I see hundreds, possibly thousands of parameters daily, mostly queries from search.

[lucy24]

If you don't personally use the “newsid” parameter at all, then you’ve got two options in GSC.

#1 tell G### not to crawl URLs containing this parameter . (Analogy: URLs containing an element like “printfriendly=yes” where the parameter is only present if it’s got a Yes value.)
#2 tell G### to disregard the value of the parameter. (Analogy: “sortorder” or “sortby”. It will always have some value, but to the search engine it doesn’t matter which one.)

Choose carefully, because only you know what your URLs are supposed to look like.

[phranque]

If you don't personally use the “newsid” parameter at all, then you’ve got two options in GSC.

in this case, the GSC solution would be to ignore this parameter.
but for the rest of the world, the best technical solution is a 301 redirect to the canonical url.

[phranque]

Redirects in a WordPress htaccess are a PITA.

if you don't mess with the # BEGIN WordPress/# END WordPress snippet, it shouldn't be a problem doing anything else, including other mod_rewrite directives, when located properly in the .htaccess.

[keyplyr]

It's not the placement I was referring to (although that too.)

Some WP sites generate long tail link structures which could be tricky for redirects if new at it.

Many who choose WP may not be savy with RegEx.

[phranque]

true that.