Google Search Console Indexing URL Query Strings

  • Resolved Sam – The Wild Initiative

    (@thewildinitiative)


    1 year, 1 month ago

    I’m trying to clean up errors in my Google Search Console. The biggest issue I’m running into is that it’s trying to index a huge variety of query strings. We’re talking everything from search parameters, to Facebook click IDs, AMP pages, to lord knows what else. Some examples…

    I’ve seen others bring up this topic and talk about adding a noindex tag to these URLS. I’m just not clear how to do that. I understand how to use RankMath to add that to the pages themselves, but not to just those URLs with the query strings.

    Curious how to do that without messing up the indexing of the base page. Additionally curious what will happen if I implement a solution, then down the line decide to implement an AMP plugin.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Support Rank Math Support

    (@rankmathteam)

    Hello @thewildinitiative,

    Thank you for contacting support.

    It’s not possible to set those to “noindex” using our plugin settings directly. What you can do is use the capabilities of our plugin to edit the robots.txt file and add directives to prevent those from being crawled.

    One example of a dummy Facebook ID query string would be the following:
    Disallow: ?facebook_id=*

    Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.

    Hello,

    The best is to put:

    Disallow: /?s=*

    Otherwise, Google will index a lot of weird urls.

    Plugin Support Rank Math Support

    (@rankmathteam)

    Hello @pierreto,

    Thank you for your suggestion.

    Yes, that will also help with search query parameters on your site to block bots from crawling them.

    The main goal is to ensure search engines understand the primary content pages and don’t get confused by multiple similar URLs with different query parameters.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    But is there any specific reason why these urls with ?m or ?q= are crowling by google ?

    • This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by dev44.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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