In a recent update to its Search Central documentation, Google has added specific guidelines for URL parameter formatting.
The update brings parameter formatting recommendations from a faceted navigation blog post into the main URL structure documentation, making these guidelines more accessible.
Key Updates
The new documentation specifies that developers should use the following:
Equal signs (=) to separate key-value pairs
Ampersands (&) to connect multiple parameters
Google recommends against using alternative separators such as:
Colons and brackets
Single or double commas
Why This Matters
URL parameters play a role in website functionality, particularly for e-commerce sites and content management systems.
They control everything from product filtering and sorting to tracking codes and session IDs.
While powerful, they can create SEO challenges like duplicate content and crawl budget waste.
Proper parameter formatting ensures better crawling efficiency and can help prevent common indexing issues that affect search performance.