I suspect it's probably a global library that handles this. So refactoring it in one place would be difficult. If I had to guess their implementation looks some

I suspect it's probably a global library that handles this. So refactoring it in one place would be difficult. If I had to guess their implementation looks something like this. SomeUrlService.pushState(JSON.stringify({ foo: 'bar' })); SomeUrlService.navigate('/some/url/here') Likely, that "SomeUrlService" is also tacking on plenty of other shit to the URL that is passed along. I don't work for Yahoo and never have, so this is all pure speculation.