Variables in URL.

[winamatt]

Hello,

Our tracking links are :
"www.website.com/redirection/XXX/YYY/www.website.com/page.html" .
With a 301 redirection to "www.website.com/page.html"

Would it be better to use "www.website.com/page.html?=XXXYYY" ?

Cheers

Matt

[Tompt]

It would certainly be simpler and that's generally a good idea.

It seems a very unnecessary use of 301 redirects, and if you're doing that a lot it could make your link profile look peculiar. I would suggest using the "?=XXXYYY" with a canonical tag to keep things straight. It could be argued that this too is unnecessary, but it can't hurt.

[oznappies]

I agree with Tompt, that syntax looks very much link the way farms do it and could get unwanted penalities from Google.

If the ultimate page is XXXYYY and you want that page to get link juice then www.website,com/XXXYYY is the best format as the page.html?=XXXYYY is not as strong. That can ge done with url rewrite and there are plenty of examples for most of the hosting platforms out there. If you not want to pass link juice then use javascript click event to make the call and Google will ignore it, especially if you set NOFOLLOW on the link anchor.

[winamatt]

Hi Oznappies,

Thanks for you answer.

The ultimate page is 'page.html', XXXYYY only gives the information about the traffic source.

Cheers

Matt

[oznappies]

If page.html is theultimate goal, then www.website.com/page.html?source=xxxyyy will give link juice to page.html, just make sure you tell webmaster tool site config that 'source' is a parameter and you will have the juice to flow to page.html. I would also add to make sure all the engines index it correctly.