My dev is rewriting the filters plugin for my eCommerce site as our current plugin slows pageload, and part of this is to rewrite pagination and he has asked me how the query strings should be handled.
I have indicated to use fragment identifiers (hashtags) wherever possible to avoid hassles with duplicate pages, ideally using a query parameter for the pagination followed by the hashtag fragment identifier to apply the relevant filters (colour, size etc). Then I can guide crawling through canonical and pagination tags & elements. i.e.
www.example.com?pagenumber=2#/manFilters=
He has come back to me saying that using the original query strings for pagination results in slow page load, and he wants to use ajax for pagination to speed things up.
My confusion lies in that he seems to want to use the query and fragment identifiers in a manner I've not seen before in that the query string is after the fragment identifier i.e.
www.example.com#?pageNumber=2
He said he can also do this the other way around i.e.
www.example.com?#pageNumber=2
Has anyone ever come across the use of a query parameter after the hashtag, and are there any considerations I need to make. Or will a search engine still simply ignore all the parameters after the hashtag regardless?
