Google’s new shva=1 URL parameter is causing a stir online. What does it mean and why is it so important? Google’s new shva=1 URL parameter is causing a stir online. What does it mean and why is it so important? The shva=1 parameter, which stands for “shiva index,” was first spotted by Google engineer Amit Singhal on the company’s internal mailing list. It allows websites to specify how many pages they want Google to index for them, instead of relying on the default of 10 pages. Indexing means that Google will include your website in its search results, making it easier for people to find. Sites that use the shva=1 parameter can expect an increase in traffic as a result. ..
If you aren’t a programmer you might have never thought about all that stuff in the URL when you visit Gmail, but after years of noticing this, I finally decided to look it up. Turns out it actually does stand for something.
What the shva=1 Parameter Means
According to Google engineer Mike Sego:
To further explain…
Once you login to Gmail, their servers need to make sure that you’re actually logged in, and adding this parameter tells the Gmail web application that you’re logged in, so the Gmail App doesn’t need to reload and re-check the authentication. Note: while testing we noticed that sometimes Gmail ignores this parameter, and sometimes it uses it.
And just to give you even more useless information…
The #inbox parameter that you can see in the location bar tells Gmail which label to load. Go ahead, change #inbox to #drafts and you’ll see that the page doesn’t completely reload, but just acts as if you had clicked on the Drafts label.
You can even use the URL bar to change to custom labels that you’ve created, and Gmail will act as if you searched. For example, using #label/Books instead of #inbox will tell Gmail to show anything with the label of Books.
And now you know a completely useless, but somewhat interesting fact.
