Canonical tag on search.asp resultpage or what to do?

[KasperGJ]

Hi,

Im starting out doing SEO on my websites.

My issue now is, that I have this searchpage called search.asp where it's possible to search for profiles on my website.

When you go to search.asp the page displays all profiles as default, and it's then possible to change things like age, hairlenght and lots of small variables.

When you submit the queries, the url would be some linke this:
wwww.site.com/search.asp?agefrom=10&ageto=40&haircolor=1&area=Denmark and so...

There is thousands of different "urls" it could change to, which is kinda bad in SEO i guess.

ATM the title tag is always "Searching for profiles", but i plan to change that, so the searchquery would be part of the title.

The problem is, that right now, this page generates tons of dublicate content.

So, my issue is, what to do?

1. Should I create a or would that "harm" my site?

2. Other ideas?

/Kasper

[KasperGJ]

Thanks a lot Patrick. I'm pretty sure, this is exactly what I need.

Ill read up on it asap, and implement it.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Google provides resources on how to handle your internal search URLs. You can read those here:
Learn the impact of duplicate URLs
URL patterns
Googlebot encountered an extremely high number of URLs on your site
Exclude URLs

While all of the above is important, the third link mentions something specifically that you should read:

"Typically, you should consider blocking dynamic URLs, such as URLs that generate search results, or URLs that can create infinite spaces, such as calendars. Using wildcards in your robots.txt file can allow you to easily block large numbers of URLs." I recommend read all of the above to help guide you in your next steps. Hope this helps! Good luck!