Duplicate content based on filters

[ProsperoDigital]

Hi Community,

There have probably been a few answers to this and I have more or less made up my mind about it but would like to pose the question or as that you post a link to the correct article for this please.

I have a travel site with multiple accommodations (for example), obviously there are many filter to try find exactly what you want, youcan sort by region, city, rating, price, type of accommodation (hotel, guest house, etc.). This all leads to one invevitable conclusion, many of the results would be the same.

My question is how would you handle this? Via a rel canonical to the main categories (such as region or town) thus making it the successor, or no follow all the sub-category pages, thereby not allowing any search to reach deeper in.

Thanks for the time and effort.

[ProsperoDigital]

Hi Leonie-Kramer,

Thanks for this, I was leaning the way of canonicals, but will try out the URL parameters first as I think this provides a great way of telling google that the content is filtering for users, but thanks for the answer, will go this route if Google still see to be struggling with Duplicates.

[ProsperoDigital]

Thanks Shawn_Huber,

The URL parameters are actually perfect, I must have somehow overlooked this. Thanks for jolting my mind.

[Leonie-Kramer]

Hi, we  solved this issue by using the cannonical of the category pages, which works fine. We also have lot of filters, like price, brand, name, etc..  and don't have duplicates on the filters.

[Shawn_Huber]

I would set up query parameters in GWT to tell Google to crawl and index those pages. This would allow for those pages to be indexed and hopefully drive traffic along with the main category pages.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080548?hl=en&rd=1