Using a slash before a question mark in a URL - Does it make a difference to rankings?
- SEO |
www.example.com/products?_color=blue
I have 2 questions:
1. My understanding is that this works fine for the purpose - Google understands that the actual page is just www.example.com/products and that what comes after "?" is just a filter. Google also understands that the link value of any links from other websites to www.example.com/products?_color=blue helps to rank the actual page, in this case www.example.com/products and not www.example.com/products?_color=blue. Is this correct?
2. The system we build creates an issue (which my developers are not able to fix), which is that a slash is added in the URL before the question mark, like this: www.example.com/products/?_color=blue Does this create any issues in terms of SEO, or does Google react to this the same way as it would without the slash? My concerns are that the slash might make the search engines believe that it is a different page, and thereby not see what comes after the question mark as just a filter for the page www.example.com/products/. This might mean that it would try to index www.example.com/products/?_color=blue (which I don't want) or not attribute the link power to the page www.example.com/products/ (and I really want the link power to that page instead of to a "filter page"). Does anyone know about this?
I have searched all over the web, but there is not a single article/post that answers this from and SEO perspective.
If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.