No query strings here either from
The article discusses the author's decision to ban query strings on their website, inspired by Chris Morgan's similar approach. The author allows only a specific query string format for cache-busting purposes while rejecting others that may include tracking parameters. The rationale behind using a 403 Forbidden status code for rejected requests is also explained.
- ▪The author has implemented a ban on query strings to prevent unwanted tracking parameters in URLs.
- ▪Only the query string format ?v=<digits> is allowed for cache-busting purposes.
- ▪Requests with any other query strings result in a 403 Forbidden response, accompanied by an explanatory message.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Furrer |
| Canonical URL | https://furrer.life/~timo/writings/2026/05/19/no-query-strings/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 13:44:35 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T13:51:11.077Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T13:51:11.077Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | OXTG1oUohbCO |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
No query strings here either May 19, 2026 by Timo Furrer A couple of weeks ago, Chris Morgan published I've banned query strings. I read it, liked it and then did roughly the same thing on my own site - with two deliberate differences. Chris's opening sums up the motivation better than I could: I don't like people adding tracking stuff to URLs. Still less do I like people adding tracking stuff to my URLs. [...] UTM parameters are for me to use, not you. Leave my URLs alone. From chrismorgan.info/no-query-strings The premise is the same here. A ?utm_source=... or ?ref=... tacked onto one of my URLs by some intermediary is, at best, noise I never asked for and at worst a tracker the referrer is using to nudge my visitor's behaviour into a funnel.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Furrer.
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