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URL query strings and canonical tag
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Hi,
I have recently been getting my comparison website redesigned and developed onto wordpress and the site is now 90% complete. Part of the redesign has meant that there are now dynamic urls in the format:
http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-productss/?display=cost&value=10
I have other pages similar to this but with different content for the different price ranges and these are linked to from the menus:
http://www.mywebsite.com/20-pounds-products/?display=cost&value=20
Now my questions are:
1. I am using Joost's All-in-one SEO plugin and this adds a canonical tag to the page that is pointing to http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-products/ which is the permalink. Is this OK as it is or should i change this to http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-products/?display=cost&value=10
2. Which URL will get indexed, what gets shown as the display URL in the SERPs and what page will users land on? I'm a bit confused so apologies if these seem like silly questions.
Thanks
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Thanks for your response Tom.
Essentially there is only one query string variation that is live and linked to for the 10 pounds url.
/10-pounds-products/ => /10-pounds-productss/?display=cost&value=10
The text content is identical on both URLs however the query results are obviously different.
I don't think there is a way to remove the canonical tag aside from removing the plugin so I may have to go with changing it to the query string.
Ideally I would like for users to see the non-query version in the SERPs and the click through to the the query version of the page. Not sure that's possible now though I will speak to the developer to see if this issue is avoidable.
Thanks again
Rosh
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If each URL with a different query string displays different information then they are effectively different pages, regardless of whether they're based on the same page framework or not (in this case /10-pounds-products/) - you only need to use a blanket canonical tag like the one' Joost's plugin gives if you want all these pages to be considered the same thing.
If you would like these pages to appear in the SERPs then you should absolutely NOT have a canonical tag telling Google all query string versions of /10-pounds-products/ are the same - not least because it's not true.
In answer to your questions -
1. If you can change it to make whatever query string version you're viewing the canonical URL then do so otherwise I would remove it completely.
2.if you keep the canonical tag then only /10-pounds-products/ will be listed in the SERPs
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