Google Adds Parameter Handling To Webmaster Tools, Plays Catchup to Yahoo Site Explorer

Sep 17, 2009 - 8:49 am 1 by

If you login to Google Webmaster Tools, click on site configuration, then on settings, you will see a new option for "parameter handling." Here is a screen capture:

Google Parameter Handling

This basically allows you to tell Google which parameters in the URL they should ignore. This comes in handy for tracking parameters added to the URL, or duplicate content caused by printer friendly URLs and many other cases.

If you want to learn more about how this stuff works, see the Google help document or read Search Engine Land article. Also, Brain was the first to spot this.

I posted a thread on this topic at Google Webmaster Help where a Googler, Jonathan Simon added, "One small correction should be noted in regards to the Search Engine Land blog post where it says it's okay to mark parameters that control sort order as ignorable. That's only true if the sorted results all fit on a single page. Otherwise you could unintentionally be excluding some data."

Yahoo Site Explorer has had this feature for a while now. Yahoo calls it Dynamic URLs and the screen looks like this:

Site Explorer Dynamic URLs

You can learn more about Yahoo's dynamic URL feature over here.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: June 13, 2025

Jun 13, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google AI Mode Search, Apple Intelligence Updates, Google Live Search, AI Content, SEO & Google Ads

Jun 13, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google

Google Is Now Rolling Out AI Mode In The US

Jun 13, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Drops Support For Seven Existing Structured Data Markups

Jun 13, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Shows Audience Size For Custom Segments

Jun 13, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Search Autocomplete With Back To All

Jun 13, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Google Says Pages That Validate Do Not Get Ranking Boost