URL Parameters Have been Alerted To Cause Crawl Problems

URL parameters have been cautioned to cause problems relating to crawling particularly for e-commerce platforms.

Google analyst, Gary Illyes made the alert in the most recent episode of Google’s Search Off The Record. Ilyes has stated in the podcast that the use of parameters may cause never-ending URLs for one page, which may create issues regarding site crawling.

URL Parameters: Limitless URLs and What It Entails

The statement made about URL parameters mostly relates to e-commerce platforms and websites. This is an issue that is quite common in e-commerce sites that employ URL parameters for various purposes such as filtering, tracking and sorting the products. The results as told by Ilyes turn ‘much more complicated’.

In the episode of the podcast, Ilyes states that while developers could technically add limitless URLs, the server simply ignores the URLs that do not change the reaction.

Ilyes has mentioned that URL parameters cause an infinite amount of URLs all on one page which could cause issues for crawlers in search engines. Problems arise with the use of these parameters including indexing, crawl budgeting, and issues relating to the site’s structure.

Crawling is a technical term used to describe the automatic access of a website and retrieval of data through software. Google also employ crawlers to collect various inputs such as images, videos and texts found on the internet. Google then analyses the input and stores it in Google’s index which acts as a sizeable database.

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