Will Disallow: /*?format= in robots blog all occurrences of ?format= in a URL?

[geoffw8_]

Hello all,

First post. Google has discovered some links (how, we don't know) that break our site, an example being:

womens/products?format=Ladies%201%20Pair%20Trasparenze%20Trivia%20Lacy%20 Hold%20Ups%2025%%20OFF%20Zucchero%20S/M

We have 80 of these showing up as errors in Google Webmaster Tools, what I'd like to do is block all occurances of ?format= in any URL and I wondered if /*?format= would do that? I'm obviously worried I could really mess this up and the info online is not exactly clear IMO.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers,

Geoff

[dzine]

Are you going to list it as a Googlebot-specific rule? Because not all bots accept fancy wildcards like that....

[geoffw8_]

Hey dzine,

I wasn't going to, but I can do. Google sends us 98% of our search traffic, so they are the ones I'm trying to keep happy!

That aside, that rule will do what I expect it to will it?

Thanks for your help

[dzine]

It looks ok enough, but keep a keen eye on your logs to be sure

[geoffw8_]

Ok, cheers. Much appreciated!

[dzine]

Quick question:
- do you link to URLs like these yourself?

[geoffw8_]

No we do not.

The way Google found these perplexes us!