Huge WordPress BUG + Negative SEO impact

what I want and what’s ideal is wordpress and any other content management system should not render ?p= in permalinks https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/?p=online+casino (look at pagination links at the bottom)

what I did while talking to you is

told google not to crawl pages with ?p= Disallow: /*?p= (hoping this action will also remove duplicate ?p= links in it’s index)
and
created a cloudflare rule which gives 404 to all pages with ?p=

now my site (not the most problematic one) https://www.outdoorhaber.com/makale/?p=type+whatever+you+want (finally I can type it freely) gives 404.(at least google won’t find ?p= links in automatically created pagination links) Since it gives 404 google wont index the link above, because it does not exist.

now when I try to use wp-admin, most of it’s parts also will give 404 error. To overcome this problem I will directly connect to my site (alter cloudflare using a host entry in hosts file in my computer)

But come on, look at this mess https://i.imgur.com/UcUxGBo.jpg they appear on search results, they create duplicate content issues. That’s why I said “this is year 2017” This shouldn’t be an issue at all.

(at least google won’t find ?p= links in automatically created pagination links)

Are you saying your site is automatically creating pagination links with that ?p=online+casinos in them? There’s not a situation where WordPress should ever do that.

Are you saying your site is automatically creating pagination links with that ?p=online+casinos in them? There’s not a situation where WordPress should ever do that.

That’s what I am telling from the beginning.

once you land on https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/30/?p=online+casino click a link on pagination links. they are like
https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/31/?p=online+casino
https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/32/?p=online+casino
https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/33/?p=online+casino
and so on…

now that I put ahrefs.com links here, google will index these pages (not just page 30,31,32,33 it will go to page 34 then page 34 will show up page 35 with ?p=online+casino and so on…)

WAIT. That’s not what I asked. I asked if your site is generating those links. It’s not.

Visiting https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/30/ (without the invalid query string) and looking at the source shows your pagination links are normal.

If you put in any URL to a site and the query strings are not valid then that’s what happens. That’s HTTP protocol. The query is there in the request but not acted upon.

That’s how the protocol works. Some of use even put query strings of ?this-is-jan-so-i-can-find-the-log-entry and that too is valid. I don’t get a 404 for that and I shouldn’t on any web server I put that into.

If you’re getting request originating from Google that have those query strings then please see Otto’s reply. On that page I saw

<link rel="canonical" href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/30/" />
<link rel="prev" href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/29/" />
<link rel="next" href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/archive/page/31/" />

And that’s what you should have. That’s all correct.

Have you pinged Google about this?

@belgen

Just out of curiosity, have you taken a look at the source code on this page?

https://www.diken.com.tr/kategori/aktuel/?p=online+casinos

Do that. Visit that URL, view the source, Ctrl+F and search for “casino”.

Looks like a hack to me.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Clayton James.

ahrefs is an example. these links are not automatically generated in my site (outdoorhaber.com)

putting a link with ?p=keyword is enough for google to follow and it treats them like new pages. because wordpress returns pagination urls with ?p=keyword added, google continue crawling pages (1,2,3,4,5,etc) with ?p=keyword

https://i.imgur.com/FhRwhWu.jpg perhaps this tool in webmastertools is the way to tell google how these p= links should be treated.

Do that. Visit that URL, view the source, Ctrl+F and search for “casino”.

Looks like a hack to me.

please do the same for your wordpress website.

yoursite.com/category/?p=online+casino please try that.

and after you try please see the pagination links generated at the bottom. They all include ?p=keyword too….

these links are not automatically generated in my site

Then your site isn’t hacked, and you should probably be paying attention to what Jan and Otto are telling you.

Then your site isn’t hacked, and you should probably be paying attention to what Jan and Otto are telling you.

they are telling me that this is a normal behavior. they are right, because drupal and .net sites behave the same.

but in reality, all sites that I posted here in this topic with ?p=keyword will face the same difficulties.

Google will follow these links and because the permalinks will include ?p=keyword tons of copies of every page will appear in google index.

Interesting !

Any other opinion ?

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by makeonlineshop.

Google will follow these links and because the permalinks will include ?p=keyword tons of copies of every page will appear in google index.

They won’t. The links here are rel="nofollow" and besides, I’m 99.44% that is not how Google works. If it were then it would be the easiest way to poison other people’s SERP and it’s 2017. The rel-canonical on our WordPress sites (like yours) don’t do that.

I really don’t know what’s going on with your site and Google but as you’ve indicated it’s not really a WordPress issue.

They won’t. The links here are rel=”nofollow” and besides, I’m 99.44% that is not how Google works. If it were then it would be the easiest way to poison other people’s SERP and it’s 2017. The rel-canonical on our WordPress sites (like yours) don’t do that.

I really don’t know what’s going on with your site and Google but as you’ve indicated it’s not really a WordPress issue.

google follows rel=”nofollow” links too. because it’s a link. that’s how google discovers new sites and pages. rel=”nofollow” just states you’re not responsible for the type of content the link has.. whether it’s good or bad.

what’s going on with my sites will go on with all sites I posted here.

this problem is arising everyday, but people always think it has something to do with getting hacked..

I think this is an untaken care of thing from the past.. from the very beginning. since all programmers are focused on their expertise and nobody complains except me, it lasts to date.

if the content of this topic concerns you in terms of seo, please try to understand what this great article below tells and try to implement the same in google webmaster tools.

https://www.silkstream.net/blog/2013/11/google-webmaster-tools-parameters-tutorial.html

For your information, this is how I acted in webmaster tools

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Cagatay Belgen.

what’s going on with my sites will go on with all sites I posted here.

It won’t, because those sites, unlike yours, have a proper rel="canonical" link.

It’s not really possible to avoid passing query strings to pagination functions by default, as plugins may add they own parameters, and an attempt to remove them automatically might break things, as there’s no way to tell in advance which query strings are necessary. However, you could do that on a case-by-case basis using get_pagenum_link filter.

If you just fix the rel="canonical" links on your site so that they have a proper protocol, Google should eventually remove those duplicate URLs with invalid query strings from the index, and no further actions will be necessary.

@sergeybiryukov

It won’t, because those sites, unlike yours, have a proper rel=”canonical” link.

are you telling that my site (outdoorhaber.com) doesn’t have proper canonical link structure? or are you guessing?

let’s wait couple days and see if google indexes the links above.