diff --git a/main.c b/main.c
index b4f0707..687bc15 100644
--- a/main.c
+++ b/main.c
@@ -436,6 +436,16 @@ main(int argc, char **argv)
 		estrlcat(tmp, dir, sizeof(tmp));
 		estrlcpy(dir, tmp, sizeof(dir));
 	}
+
+	/* remove a query string before percent decoding */
+	/* look for "?" if any to set query for cgi, remove it */
+	pos = strchr(dir, '?');
+	if (pos != NULL) {
+		estrlcpy(query, pos + 1, sizeof(query));
+		uridecode(query);
+		pos[0] = '\0';
+	}
+
 	/* percent decode */
 	uridecode(dir);
 
@@ -479,13 +489,8 @@ main(int argc, char **argv)
 		esetenv("SERVER_PROTOCOL", "GEMINI", 1);
 		esetenv("SERVER_SOFTWARE", "vger/1", 1);
 
-		/* look for "?" if any to set query for cgi, remove it */
-		pos = strchr(file, '?');
-		if (pos != NULL) {
-			estrlcpy(query, pos + 1, sizeof(query));
+		if (*query)
 			esetenv("QUERY_STRING", query, 1);
-			pos[0] = '\0';
-		}
 		/* look for an extension to find PATH_INFO */
 		pos = strrchr(file, '.');
 		if (pos != NULL) {