Query string in url - duplicate content?
-
Hi everyone I would appreciate some advice on the following.
I have a page which has some nice content on but it also has a search functionality. When a search is run a querystrong is run. So i will get something like mypage.php?id=20 etc.
With many different url potentials, will each query string be seen as a different page? If so i don't want duplicate content.
So am i best putting canonical tags in the head tags on mypage.php ? to avoid Google seeing potential duplicate content.
Many thanks for all your advice.
-
Yes, the best way is to handle via webmaster tools, and not try to handle via code on the sites. In your Google webmaster tools account, go to "Site Cinfiguration" and "URL Parameters". It will show you a handful of dynamic urls it has detected, how it is handling them currently. Then you can manually add a dynamic parameter that exists on your site and tell google how to handle it. They have a bunch of new options/features with this tool that makes it really useful now.
-
Could you explain more please, i've not tried that before.
Kind Regards,
-
You may not even have to bother with a canonical tag depending on your set up,
You may be able to amend the parameter settings in webmaster tools.
-
Thanks for that.
So mypage.php i will add a canonical tag which says mypage.php is the original page for the content.
This will then mean Google will only value mypage.php as the unique content - not any pages with a different query string in for example pages such as mypage.php?id=10&sport=football.
-
The short answer: yes and yes
Anything that changes in the URL, even one character, will be seen as a new page
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
-
Content Issues: Duplicate Content
Hi there
Technical SEO | | Kingagogomarketing
Moz flagged the following content issues, the page has duplicate content and missing canonical tags.
What is the best solution to do? Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/industrial-flooring/ Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring/0 -
Canonical Tags for Legacy Duplicate Content
I've got a lot of duplicate pages, especially products, and some are new but most have been like this for a long time; up to several years. Does it makes sense to use a canonical tag pointing to one master page for each product. Each page is slightly different with a different feature and includes maybe a sentence or two that is unique but everything else is the same.
Technical SEO | | AmberHanson0 -
Duplicate content on Places to Stay listings pages
Hello, I've just crawled our website https://www.i-escape.com/ to find we have a duplicate content issue. Every places to stay listing page has identical content (over 1,500 places) due to the fact it's based on user searches or selections. If we hide this pages using canonical tags, will we lose our visibility for each country and/or region we promote hotels? Any help on this would be hugely appreciated! Thanks so much Clair
Technical SEO | | iescape0 -
Duplicate Content
Crawl Diagnostics has returned several issues that I'm unsure how to fix. I'm guessing it's a canonical link issue but not entirely sure... Duplicate Page Content/Titles On a website (http://www.smselectronics.co.uk/market-sectors) with 6 market sectors but each pull the same 3 pages as child pages - certifications, equipment & case studies. On each products section where the page only shows X amount of items but there are several pages to fit all the products this creates multiple pages. There is also a similar pagination problem with the Blogs (auto generated date titles & user created SEO titles) & News listings. Blog Tags also seem to generate duplicate pages with the same content/titles as the parent page. Are these particularly important for SEO or is it more important to remove the duplication by deleting them? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BBDCreative0 -
Headers & Footers Count As Duplicate Content
I've read a lot of information about duplicate content across web pages and was interested in finding out about how that affected the header and footer of a website. A lot of my pages have a good amount of content, but there are some shorter articles on my website. Since my website has a header, footer, and sidebar that are static, could that hurt my ranking? My only concern is that sometimes there's more content in the header/footer/sidebar than the article itself since I have an extensive amount of navigation. Is there a way to define to Google what the header and footer is so that they don't consider it to be duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | CyberAlien0 -
Duplicated content on subcategory pages: how do I fix it?
Hello Everybody,
Technical SEO | | uMoR
I manage an e-commerce website and we have a duplicated content issue for subcategory. The scenario is like this: /category1/subcategory1
/category2/subcategory1
/category3/subcategory1 A single subcategory can fit multiple categories, so we have 3 different URL for the same subcategory with the same content (except of the navigation link). Which are the best practice to avoid this issue? Thank you!0 -
If two websites pull the same content from the same source in a CMS, does it count as duplicate content?
I have a client who wants to publish the same information about a hotel (summary, bullet list of amenities, roughly 200 words + images) to two different websites that they own. One is their main company website where the goal is booking, the other is a special program where that hotel is featured as an option for booking under this special promotion. Both websites are pulling the same content file from a centralized CMS, but they are different domains. My question is two fold: • To a search engine does this count as duplicate content? • If it does, is there a way to configure the publishing of this content to avoid SEO penalties (such as a feed of content to the microsite, etc.) or should the content be written uniquely from one site to the next? Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | HeadwatersContent0 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0