URL Parameters are used to pass information within the URL. They are used to filter, sort, track, or dynamic content generation.
Now, while on one hand, it helps to filter and sort pages, it creates SEO issues on the other hand. For example, creating infinite URLs causes crawl inefficiencies.
Mostly, e-commerce websites are affected by issues associated with URL parameters.
For example, a product page can have multiple variations of URL associated with different colors, size, or referral source.
Google is also aware of this issue and hence looking forward to exploring some solutions like bringing new algorithms and communications with site owners.
Garry Illyes (Analyst at Google), highlighted this issue during a recent episode of Google’s Search Off the record podcast.
He explained that URL parameters may cause infinite URLs to create which leads to crawl inefficiencies.
Like, the crawler may visit different URLs having the same content which exhaust the crawl budget and ultimately leads to indexing issues.
Google has been aware of this issue for quite a long time. Earlier, Google Search Console had a tool called URL Parameter Tool that helps webmasters to find out which parameters were super important and which one to ignore.
However, that tool was deprecated back in 2022 leaving webmasters in darkness of how to solve this issue.
URL Parameter Issues Solution
Primarily, URL Parameters cause duplicate content issues.
Hence, below are the possible solutions to overcome this issue.
Canonical Tags
The best solution is to use the Canonical Tags.
Adding Canonical Tags on the original page helps only the original page to rank in search engines and not its replica (with different urls).
URL Structure
Website developers should consider a different approach to create only those URLs which are in need (not the infinite variations).
Robots.txt
Since Search engine bots follow the directives present in robots.txt file before starting the website to crawl, adding appropriate directives blocking the unnecessary URLs to crawl is a great idea. However, this method is somewhat volatile because search engine bots sometimes respect the instructions present in robots.txt file and sometimes not.
Use URL Parameters Carefully to Improve Website’s Performance
URL parameters are not just tricky to website developers, search engine marketers but even for search engine giant “Google”.
The big G is working on bringing some methods to help webmasters and search engine marketers to optimize issues related to URL parameters.
What are your thoughts about URL parameters, feel free to share the same with others in the comments down below.
