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How are you supposed to <rel canonical="" tag="">a page with a query string that has already been indexed? It's not like you're serving that page from a CMS where you have an original page with content to add to the head tag.</rel>

For example....

Original Page = http://www.example.com/about/products.php

Query String Page = http://www.example.com/about/products.php?src=FrontDoorBox

Would adding the <rel canonical="" tag="">to the original page, referencing itself, be the solution so that the next time the original page is crawled, the bot will know that the previously indexed URL with query string should actually be the "original"? That's the only solution I can come up with because there's no way to find the query string rendered page to tag with the canonical.....</rel>

Okay. But since GoogleBots can't access the premium regardless, is it redundant to have on the robots.txt file? I thought the best practice was to have almost nothing on the robots.txt file per (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions)

So my question comes down to if google and other bots will hurt you if you have premium sections that they try to crawl but can't, vs ignoring them because they are on the robots.txt

So you wouldn't No index FOLLOW those pages, in case someone links to them?

My site is www.optionmonster.com It has a few different areas of "Free" and "Premium" content.

1. We have a first click free program for Google visitors, where they can read the first news article in full.

2. Other visitors and subsequent news article views have a content preview, which includes headline and first paragraph of content, and then asks for a name and email address in order to consume the rest of the free news.

3. We have premium content (paid), and all of those folders are currently on our robots.txt file

My questions are as follows....

a. How much content is needed in front of the "pay/reg wall" in order to still get proper juice from linkbacks/pagerank crawls

b. Should I make the premium content a robots meta noindex tag, or because you can't see the article at all without logging in, is a proper place to include on robots.txt

My site has a content distribution agreement with Yahoo Finance for the daily articles we publish. It's delivered to them via XML, and while we don't have in-line links within the article, we do have

1. Clickable Logo image

2. Standard language at the end of the article with a link back to our registration page

We use DART clicktags (http://ad.....) that redirects to our homepage combined with ?src=YahooFinance&affiliateId=77 query strings that are generated by these clicks to measure registration and sources

My question is twofold.

1. Are the doublclick clicktags hurting the valuable linkbacks from Yahoo Finance for picking up our content

2. What should be done with the query string extentions once people land. We still want to see that data in our Google Analytics, so is a rel=canonical the appropriate solution?