How to Remove v=XXXX string from WordPress URLs

Are you seeing strange v=xxxx string in your WordPress URLs? Recently, one of our readers asked us how to get rid of v=xxxx string from their WordPress URLs. This string is made up of seemingly random letter and numbers added as a parameter to your permalinks. In this article, we will show you how to easily remove v=xxxx string from your WordPress URLs.

Why Are You Seeing v=XXXX String in Your WordPress URLs?

This string appears on websites running an online store using WooCommerce. It is not a bug or an error, but an actual feature of the plugin.

The purpose of this string is to help WooCommerce calculate tax and shipping based on a user’s geographic location. The string helps make the feature compatible with WordPress caching plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.

However, if you don’t need to calculate shipping and taxes based on different locations, then you probably accidentally enabled this feature.

Let’s take a look at how to easily disable it and remove the random v=xxxxxx strings from your WordPress URLs.

Removing v=xxxx String from WordPress URLs

First you need to login to your WordPress admin area and head over to the WooCommerce » Settings page.

Under the General tab, you need to scroll down to ‘Default customer location’ option.

It would be set to ‘Geolocate (with page caching support)’. You need to change it to either ‘No location by default’ or ‘Shop base address’.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

If you are using a caching plugin, then you will need to clear your WordPress cache. After that you can visit your website, and the geolocation string will disappear from your WordPress URLs.

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How to GeoLocate Default Location Without the URL String?

You can do that by selecting the ‘Geolocate’ option in the ‘Default customer location’ setting.

However, this option is not compatible with static caching plugins, and it will show incorrect shipping and tax information to users due to previously cached page.

Running WooCommerce without caching is not recommended because it will slow down your site’s speed and performance.

If you must use Geolocate to calculate shipping and taxes on the fly, then for the time being you will have to tolerate the ugly v=xxxx string in your WordPress URLs.