Adding Query Strings to Hyperlinks

Hi,

I know that having a good domain name is good for SEO. Also using mod rewrite to have better looking urls such as www.example.com/exams/first-exam/ instead of something like www.example.com/test.php?id=334 would help with SEO.

Does adding superfluous query strings affect the SEO?
For example:
http://www.example.com/test.php?id=334&dummyVar=MATH&dummyVar2=101&dummyVar=Exam

These dummy variables do not really do anything in the backend, but when bots crawl a site and see this url, does it improve its engine rankings?

Just wondering.
Thanks in advance =)

 

Take a short urls include your keyword. In the long urls density of occurrence will be less.

 

If possible try to rewrite your URLs. If the variables do not result in different content being published, you may use robots.txt to block those pages. You might have a lot of duplicate content otherwise.