Are URL parameters creating duplicate pages?
Sorting, filtering and tracking parameters multiply one page into many. When those parameterised URLs are indexable and canonicalise to themselves, Google sees duplicates and splits the ranking of the clean page.
Reads the canonical signals on a sample of your pages and the parameters in your internal links. Nothing is stored.
How this check works
Shipwork reads a sample of your pages, finds the ones with query parameters, and checks whether each self-canonicalises (a duplicate risk) or points at the clean URL. It also scans internal links for tracking parameters, which create duplicates in the crawl.
Questions
- What is a parameterised URL?
- A URL with a query string, like ?sort=price or ?colour=blue. Faceted navigation and tracking links create these, often one per combination.
- Should parameterised URLs be indexed?
- Usually not. The clean URL should be the canonical, and the parameterised versions should either canonicalise to it or be blocked in robots.txt.
- Why are tracking parameters a problem?
- A link to ?utm_source=newsletter is a different URL to Google. If it is linked internally and indexable, it duplicates the page. Strip tracking parameters from on-site links.