Question
My site has webpage urls that use the following format:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22728433
italiano
english
français
española
中国
日本の
العربية
Deutsch
한국어
Português
Russianwww.mysite.com/id/pretty_title
The front page links to these pages, but the href actually contains some parameters:
www.mysite.com/id/?some_ugly_parameters_to_let_me_know_what_search_it_is_from
This then redirects to
www.mysite.com/id/pretty_title
which shows the page.
My issue is that Google's search results show the link to the page as the ugly one instead of the pretty redirected one. Besides looking ugly, it can cause errors because the parameters that are included in the ugly link are irrelevant to a user who directly enters a page from Google.
Can I get Google to only use the final redirect url? Or otherwise avoid this issue? I do need to pass these parameters along. Storing info in the session won't work because a user can have several tabs open.
Solution
On the "ugly URL page" you put <link rel="canonical" href="www.mysite.com/id/pretty_title"> which tells the search engine your preferred URL for that content.
Can also set www.mysite.com/id/?some_ugly_parameters_to_let_me_know_what_search_it_is_from to have a 301 redirect to your pretty URL
Canonical URLs: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066
301 Redirects: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en
