APO not caching URLs with query strings – expected behavior?

  • cloudres

    (@griotta)


    1 week, 1 day ago

    Hi,

    I’m trying to understand if this is expected behavior with Cloudflare APO for WordPress.

    I have WooCommerce product URLs with query strings, for example: https://example.com/product/product-name?size=1kg

    These URLs are used in Google Merchant, so they receive real traffic and should ideally be cached.

    I created a Cache Rule in Cloudflare that matches the exact query string (size=1kg) and set the request as eligible for cache, with a custom TTL.

    What I’m seeing:
    – Most of the time (~95%), these requests bypass cache
    – In a few cases, they are cached
    – When the ASN is Google (likely Google crawling Merchant URLs), it always bypasses cache

    It also looks like the Cache Rule is often not triggered at all.

    At this point I’m wondering:
    – Is this expected with APO when query strings are present?
    – Does APO override or ignore Cache Rules in this scenario?
    – Is there any recommended way to cache these URLs while keeping APO enabled?

    We need these URLs to be served from cache for performance reasons, so I’d like to understand what the correct approach is.

    Thanks.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Remkus de Vries

    (@defries)

    2 days, 15 hours ago

    APO has its own set of rules on what types of query paramaters are cached. Anything outside of that is not part of APO. I’m not entirely sure what the best approach is, but relying on a combination of APO and Cache Rules isn’t going to make APO cache it.

    Thread Starter cloudres

    (@griotta)

    2 days, 10 hours ago

    @defries I would really appreciate some further clarification on this.

    When APO is enabled, do Cache Rules still apply, or are they effectively ignored? Right now, this isn’t very clear.

    I understand what falls outside of APO, but what I don’t understand is what happens when I try to cache something using Cloudflare Cache Rules that is not included in APO.

    If APO is active, are Cache Rules simply not evaluated in these cases?

    What I’m trying to highlight is that there are many pages that could safely be cached, but are not considered by APO at all. For example, filter URLs reachable via specific query strings can be cached. The same applies to URLs used to select specific product variations.

    I hope I’m explaining this clearly enough to get a precise answer.

    Thanks for your time.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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