Google’s URL Parameters Tool will remove ‘low value’ next month

Google's URL parameters tool for webmasters will be shut down next month, but said it won't be a major loss.
SIA Team
March 28, 2022

Google’s URL parameters tool for webmasters will be shut down next month, but said it won’t be a major loss.

Google notes in a short post that the URL parameters tool will be shut down towards the end of April 2022 or roughly a month from now. After a core URL, URL parameters are used to assist filter or organize material.

However, Google currently rates this tool as “low value,” claiming that it has improved its ability to guess which URL parameters are genuinely important, which amounts to only 1% of all parameter setups, and the rest, according to Google, are not useful.

According to Google, they have improved its ability to predict which parameters are beneficial on a site and which are, to put it bluntly, meaningless. In actuality, crawling is only relevant for around 1% of the parameter configurations currently given in the URL Parameters tool. The URL Parameters tool will be deprecated in one month due to its low value for both Google and Search Console users.

Users don’t need to do anything with the tool before it goes off, according to Google, but the procedure will effectively become automatic in the future. However, rules in a site’s robot.txt file can still provide some control.

Screenshot of the URL parameter tool at its launch
Image from https://developers.google.com/