: Should I Disavow Links from Query String URLs? After analyzing our inbound links, it appears that we are getting a few thousand links from a particular site whose search engine result pages
After analyzing our inbound links, it appears that we are getting a few thousand links from a particular site whose search engine result pages (SERPs) are being indexed by search engines. The website's SERP has a common sidebar that include links to our site.
So, we are getting links from pages with URLs that look like these:
example.com/search?q=foo http://example.com/search?q=bar&page=10
etc
Looking at the site's robots.txt, it seems like they are telling robots not to index /search.
Are these links hurting our rankings? We're on page 1 or 2 for the keywords we're interested in. We'd like to go to page 1 for everything. Should we try to disavow them or leave them alone?
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Primarily you want to be looking for duplication when using query strings.
Do the strings create a new URL with identical content to another page on your site?
If this is the case you'll need to:
a) Block Google from crawling these pages using the robots.txt file.
b) Prevent Google from indexing any of these pages using the meta 'noindex' tag.
There is also a feature in Webmaster Tools (or Search Console as it's now called) that will allow you to specifically 'tell' Google what different search parameters do so that you can ensure they're handing these URLs correctly.
Looking at the site's robots.txt, it seems like they are telling robots not to index /search.
robots.txt can prevent crawling, not indexing.
to be sure, that you disavow really all links, which could hurt your site, disavow the whole domain, like:
If you want Google to ignore all links from an entire domain (like example.com), add the line domain:example.com.
It is impossible to say.
Without seeing the site, there is nothing here that distinguishes it as being a site to block. You ask if you should block sites that use query strings? No! That would likely be the referrer field and Google uses query strings. It also uses /search. If you are talking about the requester field, then that would not make sense.
You have to evaluate each site on it's own and not look at these fields which do not contain a smoking gun clue. Once you have looked at the site, then you block the site if it is warranted.
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