URL Parameters

Google is unable to automatically detect and apply geotargeting if different language or country versions of a site are separated out using parameters.

Google doesn’t usually crawl hash URLs unless it has detected over time that there is something unique it needs to pick up from the hashed version.

When auditing eCommerce sites, John recommends first looking at what URLs are crawled by Googlebot. Then identify crawl budget wastage and perhaps change the site’s URL structure to stop Googlebot crawling unwanted URLs with parameters, filters etc.

For URLs with UTM tracking parameters, Google will ignore the parameter and focus on the primary URL instead. Google will try to crawl UTM parameter URLs if they are linked to externally though, so use the parameter handling tool in GSC or the canonical tag in this instance.

Google won’t blindly follow URL parameter handling set in GSC, but John says that this is a stronger signal than using canonicals.

Google doesn’t index URLs with a hash separately, so if content is only loaded when the hash is used on a URL rather than being loaded on the main URL, this content won’t be indexed.

Rules set in URL Parameters in Search Console are used as a signal by Google for what they shouldn’t crawl, but they aren’t obeyed in the same way as robots directives.

Google will sometimes assumes that pages are duplicates before crawling them. This can happen when you have multiple parameters for your URLs that don’t actually change the content being served.

If you have shared hosting for different websites and specify the same URL parameters for each one then Google may assume that the domains are the same or equivalent.

John recommends applying parameters in Search Console at a site level as this is easier to manage than at a page level. However, if the same parameter changes the content on one page but is irrelevant on another then you will need to separate these in Search Console.