CGI Parameters: should we worry about duplicate content?
-
Hi,
My question is directed to CGI Parameters. I was able to dig up a bit of content on this but I want to make sure I understand the concept of CGI parameters and how they can affect indexing pages.
Here are two pages:
No CGI parameter appended to end of the URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html
CGI parameter appended to the end of the URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html?pagewanted=2&ref=homepage&src=mv
Questions:
Can we safely say that CGI parameters = URL parameters that append to the end of a URL? Or are they different? And given that you have rel canonical implemented correctly on your pages, search engines will move ahead and index only the URL that is specified in that tag?
Thanks in advance for giving your insights. Look forward to your response.
Best regards,
Jackson
-
Since it is a duplicate and meant for mobile devices, then yes, I would use a canonical tag or even noindex if you don't want it in the index anyway. Either method would eliminate the duplicate content problem.
-
The page content is the exact same, the the layout is built for a mobile device. So in essence we don't know why it would be indexed, unless that happens for mobile browsing pages...
So the solution is to put a rel-canonical tag on that trailing parameter page to prevent duplicate content.
-
Is the page with device=iphone&c=y different than example.html? If not, you should make sure to add the canonical tag to it. If it is different, then you shouldn't add it because it's not a duplicate.
-
Hi Steve,
Another thing I came across... a page with trailing parameters like ?device=iphone&c=y is rendering a different set of code. So we have the original page with the content, and then we have www.example.html?device=iphone&c=y. The one with the trailing parameter doesn't have a canonical tag attached to it, but it's indexed in Google (when we search the www.example.html URL) it shows up as number two.
Do you have any insights into this? Will this be a duplicate content issue?
Thanks!
Jackson
-
Thank you Steve for your response. I had come across Dr. Pete's post in the past but forgot about it. Nonetheless, the CGI parameter explanation and the use of canonical tags answers my question.
Jackson
-
Yes, you can say CGI parameters = URL parameters. I don't think many people refer to them as CGI parameters anymore though.
To answer your question, yes, as long as you have rel canonical set up correctly, then the URL parameters won't hurt your indexing.
For example, if you have your rel canonical set to http://mysite.com/japan.html
Then, only that page will be indexed, even if there are various parameters such as
http://mysite.com/japan.html?source=something&whateva=somethingelse
Just MAKE SURE to setup rel canonical correctly because it can be bad if you don't. Check out Dr. Pete's post about this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to avoid duplicate content when blogging from a site
I have a wordpress plastic surgery website. I have a wordpress blog on the site. My concern is avoiding duplicate content penalties when I blog. I use my blog to add new information about procedures that have pages on the same topic on the main site. Invariably same keywords and phrases can appear in the blog-will this be considered Duplicate content? Also is it black hat to insert anchor text in a blog linking back to site content-ie internal link or is one now and then helpful
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Duplicate video content question
This is really two questions in one. 1. If we put a video on YouTube and on our site via Wistia, how would that affect our rankings/authority/credibility? Would we get punished for duplicate video content? 2. If we put a Wistia hosted video on our website twice, on two different pages, we would get hit for having duplicate content? Any other suggestions regarding hosting on Wistia and YouTube versus just Wistia for product videos would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick1 -
Duplicate Page Content for sorted archives?
Experienced backend dev, but SEO newbie here 🙂 When SEOmoz crawls my site, I get notified of DPC errors on some list/archive sorted pages (appending ?sort=X to the url). The pages all have rel=canonical to the archive home. Some of the pages are shorter (have only one or two entries). Is there a way to resolve this error? Perhaps add rel=nofollow to the sorting menu? Or perhaps find a method that utilizes a non-link navigation method to sort / switch sorted pages? No issues with duplicate content are showing up on google webmaster tools. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | jwondrusch0 -
Dealing with duplicate content
Manufacturer product website (product.com) has an associated direct online store (buyproduct.com). the online store has much duplicate content such as product detail pages and key article pages such as technical/scientific data is duplicated on both sites. What are some ways to lessen the duplicate content here? product.com ranks #1 for several key keywords so penalties can't be too bad and buyproduct.com is moving its way up the SERPS for similar terms. Ideally I'd like to combine the sites into one, but not in the budget right away. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Timmmmy0 -
Duplicate page content issue needs resolution.
After my last "crawl" report, I received a warning about "duplicate page content". One page was: http://anycompany.com and the other was: http://anycompany.com/home.html How do I correct this so these pages aren't competing with each other or is this a problem?
Technical SEO | | JamesSagerser0 -
Help removing duplicate content from the index?
Last week, after a significant drop in traffic, I noticed a subdomain in the index with duplicate content. The main site and subdomain can be found below. http://mobile17.com http://232315.mobile17.com/ I've 301'd everything on the subdomain to the appropriate location on the main site. Problem is, site: searches show me that if the subdomain content is being deindexed, it's happening really slowly. Traffic is still down about 50% in the last week or so... what's the best way to tackle this issue moving forward?
Technical SEO | | ccorlando0 -
How to resolve duplicate content and title errors?
Hello, I'm new to this resource and SEO. I have taken the time to read other posts but am not entirely sure about the best way to resolve the issues I am experiencing and so am hoping for a helpful hand. My site diagnostics advise me that most of my errors relate to duplicate content and duplicate page titles. Most of these errors seem to relate to our ecommerce product pages. A little about us first, we manufacture and retail over the internet our own line of unique products which can only be purchased through our website. So it’s not so important to make our product pages stand out from competitors. An example of one of our product pages can be found here: http://www.nabru.co.uk/product/Sui+2X2+Corner+Sofa In terms of SEO we are focusing on improving the rankings of our category pages which compete much more with our competitors, but would also like our product pages to be found via a google search for those potential customers that are at the late stage of a buying cycle. So my question: Whilst it would be good to add more content to the product pages, user reviews, individual product descriptions etc (and have good intentions to do this over time, which unfortunately is limited) is there an easy way to fix the duplicate content issues, ensure our products can be found and ensure that the main focus is on our category pages? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | jannkuzel0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a main sales page and then we have a country specific sales page for about 250 countries. The country specific pages are identical to the main sales page, with the small addition of a country flag and the country name in the h1. I have added a rel canonical tag to all country pages to send the link juice and authority to the main page, because they would be all competing for rankings. I was wondering if having the 250+ indexed pages of duplicate content will effect the ranking of the main page even though they have rel canonical tag. We get some traffic to country pages, but not as much as the main page, but im worried that if we remove those pages and redirect all to main page that we will loose 250 plus indexed pages where we can get traffic through for odd country specific terms. eg searching for uk mobile phone brings up the country specific page instead of main sales page even though the uk sales pages is not optimized for uk terms other than having a flag and the country name in the h1. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0