Canonical for stupid _GET parameters or not? [deep technical details]
-
Hi,
Im currently working on www.kupwakacje.pl which is something like travel agency. People can search for holidays and buy/reserve them. I do know plenty of problems on my website, and thx to seomoz hopefully I will be able to fix them but one is crucial and it's kind of hard to fix I think. The search engine is provided by external party in form of simple API which is in the end responding with formatted HTML - which is completly stupid and pointless, but that's not the main problem. Let's dive in:
So for example the visitor goes to homepage, selects Egypt and hit search button. He will be redirected to
and this is not a joke
'wczasy-egipt' is my invention obviously and it means 'holidays-egypt'. I've tried to at least have 'something' in the url that makes google think it's related to Egypt indeed. Rest which is the complicated ep3[] thingy is a bunch of encoded parameters. This thing renders in first step a list of hotels, in next one hotel specific offer and in next one the reservation page. Problem is that all those links generated by this so-called API are only changing subparameters in ep3[] parameter so for example clicking on a single hotel changes to url to:
www.kupwakacje.p/wczasy-egipt/?url=wczasy-egipt/&ep3[]=%3Fsid%3Db5onrj4hdnspb5eku4s2iqm1g3lomq91%26l ang%3Dpl%26drt%3D30%26sd%3D10.06.2011%26ed%3D30.12.1999%26px%3D99999 %26dsr%3D11%253A%26ds%3D11%253A%26sp%3D
which is obviously looking not very different to the first one. what I would like to know is shall i make all pages starting with 'wczasy-egipt' a rel-canonical to the first one (www.kupwakacje.pl/wczasy-egipt) or shoudn't I? google recognizes the webpage according to webmasters central, and recognizes the url but responses with mass duplicate content. What about positioning my website for the hotel names - so long tail optimalization?
I know it's a long and complicated post, thx for reading and I would be very happy with any tip or response.
-
Also, here's a blog post from SEOmoz discussing the idea of Google, internal search results pages, and thin content: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
"Google has often taken a dim view of internal search results (sometimes called “search within search”, although that term has also been applied to Google’s direct internal search boxes). Essentially, they don’t want people to jump from their search results to yours – they want search users to reach specific, actionable information.
While Google certainly has their own self-interest in mind in some of these cases, it’s true that internal search can create tons of near duplicates, once you tie in filters, sorts, and pagination. It’s also arguable that these pages create a poor search experience for Google users.
The Solution
This can be a tricky situation. On the one hand, if you have clear conceptual duplicates, like search sorts, you should consider blocking or NOINDEXing them. Having the ascending and descending version of a search page in the Google index is almost always low value.
Likewise, filters and tags can often create low-value paths to near duplicates.
Search pagination is a difficult issue and beyond the scope of this post, although I’m often in favor of NOINDEXing pages 2+ of search results. They tend to convert poorly and often look like duplicates." -
Yeah, the iframe idea seems to be the easiest to implement and would give you a nice amount of control over both the URLs and the content on the pages. Generally Google tries to avoid indexing other sites' internal search results pages, so if you can add content around the iframe that helps make those search pages unique, that will help.
-
ok, will try all of these advices to be honest. I'm 99% sure I can't do much about the GET parameters, but will check.
Second thing which is making some kind of static pages and linking them with an iframe response seems really nice idea and is definetely doable. I will dive into that.
Third one is the most obvious one but I doubt I will manage to do it (even though I'm really not a bad developer ;)) there are about 30 parameters which need to be rewritten probably. It might be a better idea just to overwrite a few main ones (like which step user is at, which direction, which hotel etc). But can apache decode javascript?
hmm..
Thx for answers so far!
-
First, I'd look for a way to shorten the URL via the API. There are a TON of blank variables in that URL so I'm guessing the API has everything turned on, even though you're not pulling results for all those variables. If you can, get it to return data on only the things being searched for.
Next, if the API is just too unmanageable, I'd look into building static pages that pull search results into them via an iFrame. That way you could control all the URLs and content for several hundred popular searches, have nice clean URLs, but still have the dynamic search results as a portion of the page.
A last option, if possible, would be to setup URL rewrites to change the popular searches into normal sounding pages, but that could be difficult and cause things to break if the API changes suddenly or throws more random variables into the mix.
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
-
Rel: Canonical - checking advice provided by SEO agency
Hey all, We have two brands one bigger and one smaller that are on 2 different domains. We are wanting to repost some of the articles from the smaller brand to the bigger brand and what was a bit of curve ball, our SEO agency advised us NOT to put a rel: canonical on the reposted articles on the bigger brands site. This is counter to what i'm used to and just wanted to confirm with the gurus out there if this is good advice or bad advice. Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Redooo0 -
Does "google selected canonical" pass link juice the same as "user selected canonical"?
We are in a bit of a tricky situation since a key top-level page with lots of external links has been selected as a duplicate by Google. We do not have any canonical tag in place. Now this is fine if Google passes the link juice towards the page they have selected as canonical (an identical top-level page)- does anyone know the answer to this question? Due to various reasons, we can't put a canonical tag ourselves at this moment in time. So my question is, does a Google selected canonical work the same way and pass link juice as a user selected canonical? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Lewald10 -
Do you need a canonical tag for search and filter pages?
Hi Moz Community, We've been implementing new canonical tags for our category pages but I have a question about pages that are found via search and our filtering options. Would we still need a canonical tag for pages that show up in search + a filter option if it only lists one page of items? Example below. www.uncommongoods.com/search.html/find/?q=dog&exclusive=1 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Many errors in Search Console (strange parameters)
Hello, I have many strange parameters in my search console that make many 404 pages, for example: mywebsite.com/article-name/&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjk4YjY4ZDExNTYxOTgzZTk6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNFvpYpYpYf9DoyRBBu8jbiQB8JcIQ mywebsite.com/article-name/&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwj1zMLR0JbLAhUGM5oKHejjBJAQqQIILSgAMAk&usg=AFQjCNEBNFx3dG5B0-16X6eXTS7k-Srm6Q Can someone tell me how to solve it?
Technical SEO | | JohnPalmer0 -
Canonical
I am seeing canonical implementation in many sites for non identical pages. Google honoring these implementation and didn't have any issue. Did anyone have different experience? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | gmk15670 -
Why would you remove a canonical link?
Currently, my client's blog makes a duplicate page every time someone comments on a post. The previous SEO consultant told the developer to not put a canonical link directing it to the main blog post. Did taking out the canonical link result in these duplicate pages? My question is why would she recommend this action? Is it best to now add in the canonical link in or should we implement a 301 redirect or insert a index: no follow? Would adding a canonical link keep duplicate pages from happening in the future?
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
REL Canonical Error
In my crawl diagnostics it showing a Rel=Canonical error on almost every page. I'm using wordpress. Is there a default wordpress problem that would cause this?
Technical SEO | | mmaes0 -
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
Technical SEO | | jackson_lo0