How to handle lots of URL parameters

[jamesm5i]

Howdy mozzers

I'm hoping you can lend some advice. I'm dealing with a site now with loads of URL parameters. It's a vehicle dealership group which hosts its entire inventory from multiple locations on one page, sorted by parameters.

Example inventory URL: www.dealership.com/car-inventory.asp?pa=&ns=10&so=m&sor=DESC&ma=&mod=&mt=&yr=&bs=&pr=&t=used&ln=

Where pa (page no.); ns (number of vehicles shown); so (sort by condition); sor (sort order); ma (make); mod (model); yr (year); bs (body style); pr (price range); t (type - new, used, etc.); ln (location no.).

As you can imagine this generates a gazillion URLs (or slightly less). Any thoughts on best canonicalization options?

Thanks as always

[jamesm5i]

Thanks a lot for this. That video couldn't have been more timely!

[AgentsofValue]

There's actually a tool inside of Google Webmaster Tools that lets you specify how they should handle crawling your URL parameters.  It's under 'configuration -> url parameters'.  It should tell you there if they are having any trouble to crawl your site or not, based on the parameters in your URL.

Google has actually just released a video about this topic today - and it would probably be worth reviewing as well:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/08/configuring-url-parameters-in-webmaster.html