URL Masking or Cloaking?

[Happy-SEO]

Hi Guy's,

On our webshop we link from our menu to categories were we want to rank on in Google. Because the menu is sitewide i guess Google finds the categories in the menu important and meaby let them score better (onside links)

The problem that i'm facing with is that we make difference in Gender. In the menu we have: Man and Woman. Links from the menu go to: /categorie?gender=1/ and /category?gender=2/. But we don't want to score on gender but on the default URL.

For example:

• Focus keyword = Shoes
• Menu Man link: /shoes?gender=1
• Menu Woman link:  /shoes?gender=2

But we only want to rank on /shoes/. But that URL is not placed in the menu. Every URL with: "?" has a follow noindex.

So i was thinking to make a link in the menu, on man and woman: /shoes/, but on mouse down (program it that way) ?=gender. Is this cloaking for Google?

What we also could do is make a canonical to the /shoes/ page. But i don't know if we get intern linking value on ?gender pages that have a canonical.

Hope it makes senses Advises are also welcome, such as: Place al the default URL's in the footer.

[KristinaKledzik]

That's true, they append parameters tracking where you came from, which looks like it can affect the navigation you're seeing on the left. They're making sure that Google doesn't get confused by using a canonical on their pages, like Mike, Eric and I have recommended.

[Happy-SEO]

This website is doing the same:

eci.nl/engelse-boeken

On the left filters... When you hover over a link it's different from the actual URL when visiting it.

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi there,

Like Mike and Eric have said, I'd recommend using a canonical tag on the men's and women's pages to the version of the page that shows both genders' shoes/clothing.

That said, I just want to make sure this is the best path for your site. If it makes more sense for your site to point people to shoes and clothing by gender, shouldn't that be what you show in Google's search results? I'm a woman, and generally search for "women's shoes" since otherwise I often end up on pages that show men's options.

Let us know if these solutions work!

Kristina

[Eric_Rohrback]

So to clarify when you say "menu" are you talking about faceted navigation or are you talking about actual page navigation (near header/footer)? If it's faceted, then you should canonical back to the main page so you're not competing with other pages on your site (/mens-shoes or /womens-shoes). If you canonical the men's or women's page back to the main /shoes/ page then you will lose the benefit of those pages.

Does the site only work off of parameters, or do you have separate pages for different genders?

[MikeRoberts]

You might be better served by using a canonical to point the parameters to the base page. I.E. /shoes?gender=1 with a rel="canonical" pointing at "/shoes". Depends on the variety of the content of the pages, if you're cannibalizing your own keywords, etc.