Tell me more ×
Webmasters Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for pro webmasters. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

In terms of SEO and maintainability.

My website is based on WordPress, it's currently using WordPress search and it's using the same URL as the home page to return search results i.e. say my website is at domain.com then the search results are at domain.com/?<parameters>

share|improve this question
The functionnality is native in Wordpress. Why don't you want implement it again? – Zistoloen Dec 27 '12 at 8:33
I wouldn't say this is native functionality but I agree that there is a common "WordPress" way to do things here - point the search results to a WordPress "page" named "Search Results" or the like. Unfortunately, the person who implemented the search for my site didn't do so. I missed this out during testing. – Eric Nguyen Dec 27 '12 at 10:39

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote

Generally, Google or Bing don't index URLs with queries in them (ie: domain.com/?q=test). This can also be considered a black hat method because Google has warned people not to have their site search results indexed by Google. If you go to http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 you will see that under technical guidelines it says:

Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.
share|improve this answer
thanks, @ub3rst4r! Sure, I don't need to index the search results page then. I just need maintainability as a result, is there any way I can allow crawling of the page (I would like to leverage Google Webmaster to check server errors - my site search broke down a while ago) while still not indexing it? – Eric Nguyen Dec 27 '12 at 10:43
The only way I think you can do that would be if you put a link to your site search in the sitemap.xml but you can be penalized for that by Google. – ub3rst4r Dec 27 '12 at 20:25
ub3rst4r, do you have a link where it is documentated that Google/Bing don't index URLs with a query parameter? – unor Dec 27 '12 at 22:04
1  
The first sentence of this answer is false, but the rest is good info. Google and most search engines do in fact index URLs containing query strings for the simple fact that a ton of sites/apps still haven't switched entirely to friendly URLs. E.g. YouTube results are listed with query strings on Google. Friendly URLs are better for usability, but Google's only recommendation is to avoid parameters that produce duplicate content (e.g. an SID parameter or referral ID). But even in those cases, you can set a canonical URL or use Google's parameter handling tool. – Lèse majesté Dec 28 '12 at 12:34

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.