[wp-forums] Weird - 200 returned on bad url

[Dion Hulse (dd32)]

Basically, Query variables are additional data passed to a resource,
It's not the resource you're requesting.
https://www.google.com/?abc=123 is the same as
https://www.google.com/?def=123 is the same as https://www.google.com/
unless the site chooses to differentiate based on the query variables.

It's not an issue, as these links would only ever be indexed if they
were used somewhere.. and.. they shouldn't be.
No duplicate content indexing issues either, as Canonical headers will
tell search engines "This content's home address is location xyz" even
if they're accessing it at abc.

404 is for a resource which "doesn't exist" or can't be found given
the details provided.


On 14 June 2012 00:44, esmi at quirm dot net <esmi at quirm.net> wrote:
> on 13/06/2012 15:18 esmi at quirm dot net said the following:
>
>> Ok. So would "ignored" be a better phrasing? I'm still curious as to why
>> there's no attempt to redirect to a 404 in these situations.
>
>
> Sorry to follow myself up here but I'm not trying to be awkward. Nor am I
> having a "brain not working day" - well, not noticeably, anyway.  I'm
> primarily trying to come up with the best phrasing for non-tech users.
>
> It also occurred to me that a site could end up with hundreds of broken
> http://domain.com/?foo=bar type links and not be able to identify any of
> them because they would all return 200.
>
> Finally, it makes no sense to a visitor. They don't know about query
> variables. All they know is that they're trying to get to Page A and they're
> being shown Page B without any explanation.
>
> Have I missed an RFC on this kind of situation?
>
>
> Mel
> --
> http://quirm.net
> http://blackwidows.co.uk
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