Dynamic Parameter Handling in Google Webmaster Tool

With Google’s dynamic parameter handling tool, webmasters can intimate Google whether they want the domain indexed with sub-domains or not. This feature not only helps the spiders or the search engine bots to increase their crawling efficiency but also reduces displaying duplicate content of the website.

Google’s parameter handling tool can be used to avoid the dynamic parameters from indexing and webmasters can easily specify the parameters that they do not want to get indexed. Google has always tried to improve its relation with the webmasters and this advanced tool will make the crawling more effective and reduce duplicate URLs, ensuring that the information you need is preserved. This tool enables the webmasters to intimate the Google spiders of certain parameters that it needs to be aware of while going through the entire crawling process. Once the parameters are notified, Google either tries to ignore them or remove them so that the best and the most effective URLs are displayed within the search results.

What is a Parameter?

Parameter refers to the various extensions in a website like the session IDs, source, language etc. It is quite common for e.g. www. xyz.com/ contents?sid=124555. These extra extensions in the URL are called dynamic parameters. Parameter handling tool enables the webmasters to have an idea as to what the search engines should ignore and not crawl. They can easily define the search engine crawlers to ignore certain URLs of the website that webmasters want to restrict from indexing. This option helps Google to better identify the unique URLs, index them and display it on the SERPs.

How does the Tool work?

This tool enables the webmasters to improve the canonicalization of a website in Google indexing while avoiding the duplicate content. With this tool, you can easily specify up to 15 specific parameters that needs to be ignored by the Google spiders. Webmasters have to scan the list of suggested parameters and select the optional ones. With parameter handling tool you can suggest the crawlers to ignore some Dynamic URLs and make the website easily traced by the spiders. This assists the webmasters to view the parameters that Google should ignore and do the necessary changes.

Advantages of Google’s Parameter Handling Tool

Let us understand the advantages of Google’s parameter handling tool.

Increases the crawling efficiency of the spiders:

If pages with the same content are crawled by the search engine bots, then they might lack resources to crawl the unique pages of the website. Avoiding such pages will increase the efficiency of the spiders while crawling and indexing the website.

Displays the canonical version:

Only one version of the URL is displayed by the search engine and it is better to display the canonical version of the URL instead of displaying a version that contains extraneous parameters.

Low search ranks due to page rank dilution:

If an external site links to different versions of the same page, it reduces the page rank value and this leads to lower search engine rankings of the website. It is better to avoid such pages that have the same content.

With the parameter handling tool, Google can easily discover new URLs and check it against the parameter handling list and eliminate them before crawling. This reduces the crawling overhead and saves considerable bandwidth that can be used for other unique pages of the website. Webmasters need to be very careful while handling this tool, as the slightest mistake can tell Google to ignore some important parameters that can even wipe out important portions of your website.

Tarun Gupta

Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.