By jeffabailey on
I would like to have a 404 not found come up if a URL passed to my website does not exist including url parameters.
To illustrate...
If you pass in URL parameters on Google that do not exist it comes up with a 404 Not Found.
http://www.google.com/?test=test
On my website it does not work that way...
This URL shows the same content as http://guidex.biz
The reason I would like URLS like this to show up with a 404 is because I do not want Google to diminish the value of the page if someone links to http://guidex.biz/?test=test instead of http://guidex.biz.
Is there something that can be done to remedy this situation?
I am using the path and pathauto modules if that affects any possible solutions.
Comments
Interesting point
Interesting point - but technically, http://guidex.biz/?test=test does exist - its just the index page with the variable test set to the value test...
yawn
vs url
It's getting boring hearing amature SEO-tuners trying to second-guess the concept that Google will 'punish' you if you have query strungs in your URL.
OF COURSE
http://guidex.biz/?test=test
and
http://guidex.biz/?random=1
http://guidex.biz/?random=2
http://guidex.biz/?PHPSESSID=1234
http://guidex.biz/?red_herring=anything_you_feel_like
http://guidex.biz/?red_herring=anything_you_feel_like#and_hashes
http://guidex.biz/?ad=i&fin=itum
return the same stuff unless you have written code to catch that query and do something with it.
THAT'S HOW QUERY STRINGS WORK. Read the RFC. Or A pundit that makes sense
Some sensible discussion on this 'issue' was had last week
My feeling is that Google is cleverer than you are at figuring out which parts of a query are meaningful and which aren't. They made a multi-billion mega-company by building a spider that would NOT get lost in sites that happened to use the query string for a session or timestamp or randomizer.
It recognizes when pages are simply the same thing, and cannot penalize a page for the content of its query strings.
It used to be hard to convice a search engine to pay attention to query at all. I'm sure Google haven't erred in the other direction.
Imagine being able to bomb your competitors site of the map by submitting a thousand bogus entries that resolve to their pages and thereby "diluting" their ranking. Easily done on ANY site in the world, but that doesn't happen!
Some real SEO talk is in this thread
Address some of those suggestions before trying to solve a problem that's all in your head
.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
I appreciate feedback but
I appreciate feedback but this was an issue brought up by a professional SEO company that I am working with. It is not my assumption that Google with penalize the website it is what the company brought up as a possible problem.
Fair enough
I'm basically just venting at the folk that propogate this sort of disinformation.
Following one of the links above, I'd recommend you to Googles warnings about "professional" SEO consultants. EVERY site on the net is liable to query hashing like you describe. An expert who tells you it should be fixed is selling you snake oil.
And really, think about what would happen to sites like Amazon (look at the URLs) or referrer trades if this was really the case.
.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards