How do I cloak / hide URL and QueryString information?

[gibran villarreal]

Is there a way to cloak / hide URL and QueryString information?

I need to hide the QueryString parameters in the URL, I manage sensitive information in my website.

This is an example of what i get in the URL when I search...

"search.php?zoom_query=friends"

[David]

I don't understand the request.
If the user did a search for the word 'friends' then what purpose does it serve to hide the text the user just entered?

[gibran villarreal]

No, I need to hide the parameters in the URL (such as zoom_query, zoom_per_page, etc)

search.php?zoom_query=friends

[Ray]

Not sure how the parameter names would pertain to the "sensitive information" in your website. These parameter names do not have any correlation to your sensitive information.

Are you concerned about hackers or third parties trying to guess URLs without using your search page? Perhaps you should give us an actual example of what you are trying to protect.

If you mean you wish to completely remove the fact that part of the URL is a query, or part of it is a value indicating the number of results to display, etc. then this wouldn't really be possible. The parameters must have names.

If you wish to merely obfuscate what these parameters are, e.g. replace "zoom_query=friends" with "q=friends" and "zoom_per_page=10" with "pp=10", etc. then note that this really doesn't protect or hide anything. It would literally take 2 seconds to work out which parameter is which.

If you are attempting to hide the fact that it is a page of search results, and you are hoping to optimize/achieve search engine rankings (i.e. SEO) on Google, etc. then there is something known as URL Rewriting, which is a feature on most web servers like Apache and IIS. This feature allows a URL such as:

http://www.mysite.com/search.php?zoom_query=friends&zoom_per_page=10

To be accessible via a URL like this:

http://www.mysite.com/article/friends/10

That way, if you only use the latter URLs in your links, then they will be ranked higher for looking more relevant to the topic ("friends"). This doesn't have anything to do with "managing sensitive information" though, so I really don't know if that's what you mean.