Question mark in the URL: What impact does it have on SEO?

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Now that you understand the purpose of question marks in URLs, you may be wondering if they affect your website's search engine rankings (SEO). The good news is that question marks themselves don't necessarily hurt your SEO.

Search engines like Google can understand the difference between the base URL and the query string.

However, there are some potential disadvantages to consider:

Duplicate content : Although Google can decode the query string, it mom database may consider URLs with very similar base URLs and different query strings as duplicate content. This can be problematic because search engines generally prefer unique content. To avoid this, you can use tools like canonical tags to tell search engines which version of the URL is the primary one.
Thin content : Query strings are often used to filter content on a page. This can sometimes lead to "thin content" issues, where the filtered page may not contain enough unique and valuable information for search engines to rank highly.
Overall, question marks in URLs are unlikely to directly harm your SEO.

However, it's important to be careful how you use them to avoid creating duplicate content or thin content issues. In the next section, we'll explore some best practices for using question marks in URLs for a healthy SEO strategy.