How do I clean up my product and category URLs to not have a string of random characters?

[Matthew-Rogers]

I'm not sure when this started happening, but every product and category link starting having a random string of letters and numbers attached to them, and when I try to remove them the link no longer works.

Importantly, I am NOT talking about URL parameters.

For instance:

https://www.macsweeties.com/product/acid-phosphate/PXBAE65T62BAYTZIXETPE3EO

https://www.macsweeties.com/shop/additives-and-flavorings/4GFYWCNN4C45M3LSACY43XLF

https://www.macsweeties.com/product/root-beer-soda-and-cocktail-syrup/Q3M4HALQAZNQMZSYSZWONYBH

These should be:
https://www.macsweeties.com/product/acid-phosphate/

https://www.macsweeties.com/shop/additives-and-flavorings/

https://www.macsweeties.com/product/root-beer-soda-and-cocktail-syrup/

But you'll see that those links don't work.

Any ideas as to what is going on? Thanks!

EDIT: I may, in fact, be crazy. It's not impossible that these were showing up from the very beginning since I launched the site and simply didn't notice them. Regardless, I do hope that they go away.

[SVLFever]

Interestingly, all of my menu items have the random letters as well.  I'm guessing this is somehow related to the recent change regarding menus and categories, but that's just a guess on my part.   I take it you are wanting to have the web address be "clean" for marketing/promotional purposes yes?

If so, I'm not certain what the solution would be.   Anyone have a thought here?

[Matthew-Rogers]

Do you know when that change happened? This website has only been up for about a week, and I'm quite certain that the strings of characters didn't appear until the last day or two.

[SVLFever]

It's quite possible that your account was rolled into the menu/category change rollout in the last week.   I would say it's conceivable the change occurred then.

[TheRealChipA]

John, I believe you would be right.  It's not a coincidence that this happened at basically the same time as the Restaurants switch to using Menus instead of Categories.  Thankfully, I never sell URLs that are that detailed -- only page URLs

Also, @Matthew-Rogers those are NOT URL parameters.  there is no "x=y" formatting.  Those are actually integral to the complete URL.

[Matthew-Rogers]

> Also, @Matthew-Rogers those are NOT URL parameters.

Yes, I know they're not URL parameters. I said as much in my original post.

I've figured out that the letters and numbers are the unique IDs associated with products and categories on the backend. I just got off the phone with Square support and the guy told me that they are aware of the issue and are working on it, but there likely won't be a solution for at least a month or longer, which sucks for SEO, since Google is already indexing my website and when those links change, it'll all have to be re-indexed. Of course, I can always trigger Google to crawl the site again, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

[TheRealChipA]

@Matthew-Rogers I'm sure there is a technical/server reason for this, now.  However, I'm a little confused.  Why are you concerned about the URL Square assigns to categories?

[Matthew-Rogers]

> Why are you concerned about the URL Square assigns to categories?

For a few reasons. Sharing URLs, for one. SEO, for another. After all, if random strings of characters appear today, then they may disappear tomorrow. I'd really rather not have to go in and do a ton of 301 redirects every time something weird like that happens.

Also, a lot of people, when sharing URLs with each other, strip out URL parameters to make it cleaner when pasting into a chat or text platform. Doing so with this, however, will break the link.

Finally, it's because they clearly don't belong on category or product pages and I'd rather they weren't there.

[TheRealChipA]

Also, @Matthew-Rogers rather than continue to guess about why the engineers did this, I'll tag the Community moderators.  One of them can check with the product team to see if they can provide information.  My bet is that those characters will never change, though.  They seem to be identifiers of some sort, and they definitely are NOT parameters.

@Kassi_@RSosebee1@_Violet@MayaP@Summer2024@Summer2024@Ellie_@Katie_SQ@Laurie_@Sammie_C

[Matthew-Rogers]

> they definitely are NOT parameters

I think I see where the confusion re:parameters is coming from. What I was saying before is that because these look like URL parameters, someone sharing a link may delete that string when sharing. 

That said, thanks for helping push this up the line. Hopefully it's something that will be resolved.