Google has confirmed that the company is working on fixing a data issue with the URL parameter tool. This is a legacy tool within Google Search Console that lets advanced SEOs communicate to Google insignificant page variations and direct Google to consolidate those URLs.
The issue. Many SEOs are noticing that the data shown in the URL parameter tool is not accurate. Ryan Mews wrote, “Did something change in GSC’s URL Parameter handling area? Seeing little to no parameters where there was once 100+ parameters for large e-com sites.” Jeff Flowers wrote, “the number of “URLs monitored” is now completely empty. Which is very odd for this site.” Glenn Gabe wrote, “Many sites I’m checking have 0 urls monitored now.”
Everything is fine? But most SEOs are saying this is just a data bug in Google Search Console. Both Jeff Flowers and Glenn Gabe said crawling and their own internal analytics and tools show that crawling and indexing is fine based on the URL parameters both have configured.
Google’s John Mueller also implied this is a data issue and not an indexing or ranking issue. He said, “There’s some weirdness with the data shown there, we’re working on getting that resolved. Sorry for the confusion!”
The fix. When will this be fixed? It is unsure. At least Google is aware of the issue and seems like Google is “working on getting that resolved” as John Mueller wrote. But we have no estimated time for a fix.
Do not panic. For now, just ignore the report until we know this report is fixed. Hopefully it won’t take too long. But do not go into the tool and make changes because the data is wrong. Just wait for Google to fix it. Because the URL parameter tool is advanced and you can damage your site’s indexing and ranking if you do something wrong.
Why we care. Advanced SEOs have a lot of experience using the URL parameter tool. They know that this is a powerful tool that can cause serious crawling, indexing and ranking issues if used incorrectly. If Google is showing wrong reporting data in the tool, that can potentially lead to you making changes in the tool that can potentially cause ranking issues. For now, wait it out until Google confirmed it fixed the data in the tool.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.