I’m having trouble with my WordPress site where a strange URL parameter keeps showing up at the end of all my page URLs. The parameter looks like Feed%20URL and it’s causing problems.
For example, instead of having a clean URL like:
https://mysite.com/important-wordpress-tips/
I get this messy version:
https://mysite.com/important-wordpress-tips/Feed%20URL
This is really frustrating because when Google tries to crawl these URLs with the extra parameter, they return 404 errors. I’m worried this might hurt my search rankings and drive away visitors.
I’ve already tried a few things to fix this issue. I went into Google Search Console and used the URL Parameters tool to block this parameter. I also turned off RSS feeds completely on my WordPress site. Plus I keep removing these broken URLs through the URL removal tool in Search Console, but they just keep coming back.
Does anyone know what might be causing this Feed%20URL parameter to appear? Is there a way to stop it from being added to my URLs in the first place? Any help would be great because these 404 errors are really concerning me.
check your server logs to see where these requests are coming from - could be an external bot or scraper adding that parameter. clear all your caches too (hosting cache, wordpress cache plugins, etc.) since cached versions might be serving the wrong urls. feed readers and social platforms sometimes save malformed urls and keep hitting them repeatedly.
This Feed%20URL thing usually comes from badly coded RSS integrations or third-party services that mess with your URLs. I’ve seen this before with automated content syndication services that don’t encode spaces properly in feed parameters. Check any recent integrations - social media schedulers, email marketing tools, content distribution networks. They often add tracking parameters that get corrupted. Also look at your .htaccess file for redirect rules that might be tacking “Feed URL” onto your permalinks. Try switching to a default WordPress theme temporarily to see if it still happens - custom themes sometimes have broken RSS code. If it keeps happening, turn on WordPress debug logging to catch when these parameters get added.
It sounds like you’ve been facing a frustrating issue with that Feed%20URL parameter. In my case, I found that this often stems from conflicts with certain plugins, particularly those related to social media or SEO that interfere with RSS feeds. A good approach I used was to deactivate all plugins, then reactivate them one at a time to identify which one was causing the problem. Once I isolated the issue, I reached out to the plugin’s support team and discovered it was a known bug, for which they provided a patch. Additionally, don’t forget to inspect your theme’s functions.php file for any custom RSS code that might be contributing to the issue, as some themes include problematic social sharing features. Addressing the root cause should help eliminate those pesky URLs from your site.