topic Re: Redirect or disable hs_preview page links in Blog, Website & Page Publishing

Redirect or disable hs_preview page links

MattOnce — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:59:10 GMT

Hi all.

I am having an issue with an unpublished blog post preview link getting traffic.

The blog post itself had been unpublished/set to draft for a long time, and a URL redirect added to point visits to a more relvant webpage.
My problem is that the "...?hs_preview=..." version of the blog post link (that one typically uses to preview unpublished changes) is still receiving traffic. My attempts to redirect this as well - both via flexible redirect, or a full url standard redirect - have been unsuccessful. I assume this is due to ?hs_preview being a Hubspot-specific parameter and is being handled differently within the platform.
Can I disable this preview link, or create a redirect for it?

Re: Redirect or disable hs_preview page links

evaldas — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 20:31:55 GMT

Hi @MattOnce,

There is no way to disable the "...?hs_preview=..." query parameter since that is part of the core functionality that allows previewing pages in HubSpot.

I highly doubt redirects would be possible here, since it would impact the ability to preview a page and there are probably some safety mechanisms to prevent that.

What you do could is try excluding URLs containing "hs_preview" from your analytics reports.

Re: Redirect or disable hs_preview page links

MattOnce — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 06:33:00 GMT

Thanks, @evaldas I think you're exactly right. I guess my question was whether there was a way to "unpublish" this preview page. I'll suggest deleting the post completely, if our SEO person thinks it's that big of a problem.

Thanks again.

Re: Redirect or disable hs_preview page links

evaldas — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 17:07:56 GMT

No problem @MattOnce

There isn't really a way to "unpublish" the preview link because it is something that gets generated dynamically.

If you are still getting hits on the link, ask the SEO person to check the referrers to identify where this preview link is found. If it is found on one of your website pages, then any links to the "hs_preview" version should be removed or replaced with the live/published version.

If the referrer is direct traffic or "app.hubspot.com" then there should be nothing to worry about.