: Stop my website from redirecting to add a query parameter on first visit When I type my web page address for the first time in a new browser, the address is automatically added by some strange

@Speyer207

The issue that you have is that adding a query string on the end of the URL causes a redirect, because of this, browsers will naturally cache the redirect, saving the visitor having to hop from one URL to the next on the next visit. That's why its essential that you don't use redirects unless you absolutely don't need to.

You can stop browsers caching by setting the header to no cache, choose one of the methods below:

In PHP

<?php
// NO CACHE METHOD
header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate"); // HTTP 1.1
header("Pragma: no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0
header("Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT"); // EXPIRED ON BACK TO THE FUTURE DAY

// EXPIRE METHOD
header("Cache-Control: max-age=2592000"); // 30 DAYS (SECONDS)
?>


In HTML

<meta http-equiv="Cache-control" content="no-cache">


In .htaccess

<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header unset ETag
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"
Header set Expires "Wed, 21 Oct 2015 00:00:01 GMT" # EXPIRED ON BACK TO THE FUTURE DAY
</ifModule>


You should also be aware that Google and Bing does not take a liking to sites that redirect on first visit, since Google will index that one and not the later, also, it is not allowed that you 'detect' Google or Bing bots and treat them any differ than a normal visitor, e.g by IP or User Agent, and neither use cookies.

Therefore you should ensure that Google is redirected to /?i=1 and since Google or Bing bots otherwise you may be subject to a algorithmic penalty for cloaking.

Redirecting on first visit sounds awful for UX and search engines, but if you must add # rather than ? since Google will treat it as the same page.

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