Dynamic Canonical Tag for Search Results Filtering Page

[GAnalytics]

Hi everyone,

I run a website in the travel industry where most users land on a location page (e.g. domain.com/product/location, before performing a search by selecting dates and times. This then takes them to a pre filtered dynamic search results page with options for their selected location on a separate URL (e.g. /book/results).

The /book/results page can only be accessed on our website by performing a search, and URL's with search parameters from this page have never been indexed in the past.

We work with some large partners who use our booking engine who have recently started linking to these pre filtered search results pages. This is not being done on a large scale and at present we only have a couple of hundred of these search results pages indexed.

I could easily add a noindex or self-referencing canonical tag to the /book/results page to remove them, however it’s been suggested that adding a dynamic canonical tag to our pre filtered results pages pointing to the location page (based on the location information in the query string) could be beneficial for the SEO of our location pages.

This makes sense as the partner websites that link to our /book/results page are very high authority and any way that this could be passed to our location pages (which are our most important in terms of rankings) sounds good, however I have a couple of concerns.

• Is using a dynamic canonical tag in this way considered spammy / manipulative?

• Whilst all the content that appears on the pre filtered /book/results page is present on the static location page where the search initiates and which the canonical tag would point to, it is presented differently and there is a lot more content on the static location page that isn’t present on the /book/results page. Is this likely to see the canonical tag being ignored / link equity not being passed as hoped, and are there greater risks to this that I should be worried about?

I can’t find many examples of other sites where this has been implemented but the closest would probably be booking.com.

https://www.booking.com/searchresults.it.html?label=gen173nr-1FCAEoggI46AdIM1gEaFCIAQGYARS4ARfIAQzYAQHoAQH4AQuIAgGoAgO4ArajrpcGwAIB0gIkYmUxYjNlZWMtYWQzMi00NWJmLTk5NTItNzY1MzljZTVhOTk02AIG4AIB&sid=d4030ebf4f04bb7ddcb2b04d1bade521&dest_id=-2601889&dest_type=city&

Canonical points to

https://www.booking.com/city/gb/london.it.html

In our scenario however there is a greater difference between the content on both pages (and booking.com have a load of search results pages indexed which is not what we’re looking for)

Would be great to get any feedback on this before I rule it out.

Thanks!

[webduh]

No upvotes for the righteous?

[DeFi_Noodle]

@GAnalytics said in Dynamic Canonical Tag for Search Results Filtering Page:

Is using a dynamic canonical tag in this way considered spammy / manipulative?

I believe that it's fine to do that. But I would still avoid indexing duplicate content in google. Index the best one and remove the others, won't affect your backlinks.

[brodynienow]

@webduh I agree with you. I have also used this strategy for the website and it is working fine. Thank you for sharing with us.
Brody Nienow from: https://whiteroseshub.com/

[webduh]

@GAnalytics The search filtered pages appear to have value added to me. a Solar Installation Company Fafco.com uses a calendar that points to events that don't exist and ranks for hundreds of words for it. I think you should be fine. Please feel free to backlink Webduh.com if this advice helps

David with Webduh.com