Info Technical SEO
URL contains parameters
- Severity
- Info
- Impact
- Low
- Effort to fix
- Medium
- Issue code
url_parameters
Why it matters
Parameters can create many URLs for the same content and waste crawl budget.
How to fix it
Link to clean URLs where possible and use canonical tags on parameter variations.
What this means
The URL has a query string, the part after ?, for example /shoes?color=blue&sort=price. This is an Info notice: parameters are normal, and many are fine. The evidence shows the query string so you can judge which kind it is.
Which parameters cause problems
| Kind | Example | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Filters and sorting | ?color=blue, ?sort=price | Thousands of combinations of the same products, wasting crawl budget and creating near-duplicates |
| Tracking | ?utm_source=newsletter, ?gclid=... | The same page indexed under many URLs |
| Session IDs | ?sid=8f2a... | A new URL for every visitor |
| Pagination | ?page=2 | Usually fine, as long as each page is crawlable and self-canonical |
| Content selectors | ?id=123 on an old CMS | Fine when each value is a distinct page |
Why it matters
Parameters multiply URLs. Crawlers spend their time on endless variations of a few pages instead of finding your important ones, and similar versions compete with each other in the index.
How to fix it
- Never link internally with tracking parameters. UTM tags are for external campaigns only.
- Point canonical tags at the clean URL on filtered, sorted and tracked variations.
- Keep filter combinations out of crawling on large catalogues: link only to the filters you want indexed, and consider blocking the rest of the parameter patterns in robots.txt. Blocked URLs cannot pass their canonical signal, so do not block parameters that already have many links.
- Remove session IDs from URLs and use cookies instead.
Verify the fix
The URL Structure view in Pages lists every URL with parameters. After the changes, recrawl and compare: the number of parameter URLs found should drop, and the ones left should be variations you chose to keep. See also Near-duplicate content.
How it affects your score
Info notices never lower any score. They are listed so you can confirm the behaviour is intended. A note for review. It never lowers the score.
Find the affected URLs
Open Crawl > Issues and pick URL contains parameters. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (low) and effort (medium), and in the issues CSV under the code url_parameters. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.