On 20 January 2026 at 13:12 Journeyman Said:
Everything after and including the ? is tracking data and can be ignored when you post a link.
John
Thanks for that, John! You learn something every day. I could never understand why some URLS are so long; the length of this one is more than enough to describe the full history of the position, velocity and mass of every particle that has existed since the Big Bang!
URLs can be parameterised to fill a form out on the server. This example is probably providing tracking information as journeyman says.
The data makes a little more sense when each field is printed on a separate line but it’s only meaningful to the system and it’s designer. Things like cookie references and referrers, ie the website/search engine that originally supplied the link to the customer. % characters signal the next character is hexadecimal, often punctuation – %40 is the @ sign. Not meant for humans unless they’re debugging.
URLs can be reverse engineered by hackers. They look for fields that might let them inject a nasty into the server which is why the logic that validates input is often more elaborate than the transaction.
Though I see location and currency in it (UK and GBP), this example is mostly gobbledygook.
Host : http://www.aliexpress.com
Href : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009149386830.html?
spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.3.4799krAlkrAliJ&
gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&
scm=1007.40050.354490.0&
scm_id=1007.40050.354490.0&
scm-url=1007.40050.354490.0&
pvid=80ed745a-533e-4e91-8210-c8b706fab987&
_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40050.354490.0,pvid:80ed745a-533e-4e91-8210-c8b706fab987,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238109%231935&
pdp_ext_f=%7B%22order%22%3A%228%22%2C%22eval%22%3A%221%22%2C%22sceneId%22%3A%2230050%22%2C%22fromPage%22%3A%22recommend%22%7D&
pdp_npi=6%40dis%21GBP%215.44%215.44%21%21%2149.28%2149.28%21%402103890117689119106971250e711a%2112000048095129775%21rec%21UK%21%21ABXZ%211%210%21n_tag%3A-29910%3Bd%3A324d2243%3Bm03_new_user%3A-29895&
utparamurl=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller%7Cquery_from%3A%7Cx_object_id%3A1005009149386830%7C_p_origin_prod%3A
Path : /item/1005009149386830.html
Query : ?
spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.3.4799krAlkrAliJ&
gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&
scm=1007.40050.354490.0&
scm_id=1007.40050.354490.0&
scm-url=1007.40050.354490.0&
pvid=80ed745a-533e-4e91-8210-c8b706fab987&
_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40050.354490.0,pvid:80ed745a-533e-4e91-8210-8b706fab987,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238109%231935&
pdp_ext_f=%7B%22order%22%3A%228%22%2C%22eval%22%3A%221%22%2C%22sceneId%22%3A%2230050%22%2C%22fromPage%22%3A%22recommend%22%7D&
pdp_npi=6%40dis%21GBP%215.44%215.44%21%21%2149.28%2149.28%21%402103890117689119106971250e711a%2112000048095129775%21rec%21UK%21%21ABXZ%211%210%21n_tag%3A-29910%3Bd%3A324d2243%3Bm03_new_user%3A-29895&
utparamurl=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller%7Cquery_from%3A%7Cx_object_id%3A1005009149386830%7C_p_origin_prod%3A
Hash :
I don’t think the HTTP specification limits the length of a URL. But rule of thumb is to keep them below 2000 characters because quite a few big name Browsers can’t cope, poor weedy things. Unless it’s been upgraded Edge is only good for 2083 characters, whilst Safari does 80000.
Dave