Canonical for stupid _GET parameters or not? [deep technical details]
-
Hi,
Im currently working on www.kupwakacje.pl which is something like travel agency. People can search for holidays and buy/reserve them. I do know plenty of problems on my website, and thx to seomoz hopefully I will be able to fix them but one is crucial and it's kind of hard to fix I think. The search engine is provided by external party in form of simple API which is in the end responding with formatted HTML - which is completly stupid and pointless, but that's not the main problem. Let's dive in:
So for example the visitor goes to homepage, selects Egypt and hit search button. He will be redirected to
and this is not a joke
'wczasy-egipt' is my invention obviously and it means 'holidays-egypt'. I've tried to at least have 'something' in the url that makes google think it's related to Egypt indeed. Rest which is the complicated ep3[] thingy is a bunch of encoded parameters. This thing renders in first step a list of hotels, in next one hotel specific offer and in next one the reservation page. Problem is that all those links generated by this so-called API are only changing subparameters in ep3[] parameter so for example clicking on a single hotel changes to url to:
www.kupwakacje.p/wczasy-egipt/?url=wczasy-egipt/&ep3[]=%3Fsid%3Db5onrj4hdnspb5eku4s2iqm1g3lomq91%26l ang%3Dpl%26drt%3D30%26sd%3D10.06.2011%26ed%3D30.12.1999%26px%3D99999 %26dsr%3D11%253A%26ds%3D11%253A%26sp%3D
which is obviously looking not very different to the first one. what I would like to know is shall i make all pages starting with 'wczasy-egipt' a rel-canonical to the first one (www.kupwakacje.pl/wczasy-egipt) or shoudn't I? google recognizes the webpage according to webmasters central, and recognizes the url but responses with mass duplicate content. What about positioning my website for the hotel names - so long tail optimalization?
I know it's a long and complicated post, thx for reading and I would be very happy with any tip or response.
-
Also, here's a blog post from SEOmoz discussing the idea of Google, internal search results pages, and thin content: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
"Google has often taken a dim view of internal search results (sometimes called “search within search”, although that term has also been applied to Google’s direct internal search boxes). Essentially, they don’t want people to jump from their search results to yours – they want search users to reach specific, actionable information.
While Google certainly has their own self-interest in mind in some of these cases, it’s true that internal search can create tons of near duplicates, once you tie in filters, sorts, and pagination. It’s also arguable that these pages create a poor search experience for Google users.
The Solution
This can be a tricky situation. On the one hand, if you have clear conceptual duplicates, like search sorts, you should consider blocking or NOINDEXing them. Having the ascending and descending version of a search page in the Google index is almost always low value.
Likewise, filters and tags can often create low-value paths to near duplicates.
Search pagination is a difficult issue and beyond the scope of this post, although I’m often in favor of NOINDEXing pages 2+ of search results. They tend to convert poorly and often look like duplicates." -
Yeah, the iframe idea seems to be the easiest to implement and would give you a nice amount of control over both the URLs and the content on the pages. Generally Google tries to avoid indexing other sites' internal search results pages, so if you can add content around the iframe that helps make those search pages unique, that will help.
-
ok, will try all of these advices to be honest. I'm 99% sure I can't do much about the GET parameters, but will check.
Second thing which is making some kind of static pages and linking them with an iframe response seems really nice idea and is definetely doable. I will dive into that.
Third one is the most obvious one but I doubt I will manage to do it (even though I'm really not a bad developer ;)) there are about 30 parameters which need to be rewritten probably. It might be a better idea just to overwrite a few main ones (like which step user is at, which direction, which hotel etc). But can apache decode javascript?
hmm..
Thx for answers so far!
-
First, I'd look for a way to shorten the URL via the API. There are a TON of blank variables in that URL so I'm guessing the API has everything turned on, even though you're not pulling results for all those variables. If you can, get it to return data on only the things being searched for.
Next, if the API is just too unmanageable, I'd look into building static pages that pull search results into them via an iFrame. That way you could control all the URLs and content for several hundred popular searches, have nice clean URLs, but still have the dynamic search results as a portion of the page.
A last option, if possible, would be to setup URL rewrites to change the popular searches into normal sounding pages, but that could be difficult and cause things to break if the API changes suddenly or throws more random variables into the mix.
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
-
Disallowing URL Parameters vs. Canonicalizing
Hi all, I have a client that has a unique search setup. So they have Region pages (/state/city). We want these indexed and are using self-referential canonicals. They also have a search function that emulates the look of the Region pages. When you search for, say, Los Angeles, the URL changes to _/search/los+angeles _and looks exactly like /ca/los-angeles. These search URLs can also have parameters (/search/los+angeles?age=over-2&time[]=part-time), which we obviously don't want indexed. Right now my concern is how best to ensure the /search pages don't get indexed and we don't get hit with duplicate content penalties. The options are this: Self-referential canonicals for the Region pages, and disallow everything after the second slash in /search/ (so the main search page is indexed) Self-referential canonicals for the Region pages, and write a rule that automatically canonicalizes all other search pages to /search. Potential Concern: /search/ URLs are created even with misspellings. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Alces1 -
Canonical Expert question!
Hello, I am looking for some help here with an estate agent property web site. I recently finished the MoZ crawling report and noticed that MoZ sees some pages as duplicate, mainly from pages which list properties as page 1,2,3 etc. Here is an example: http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=2
Technical SEO | | artdivision
http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=3 etc etc Now I know that the best practise says I should set a canonical url to this page:
http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=all but here is where my problem is. http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=1 contains good written content (around 750 words) before the listed properties are displayed while the "page=all" page do not have that content, only the properties listed. Also http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses?page=1 is similar with the originally designed landing page http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses I would like yoru advise as to what is the best way to can url this and sort the problem. My original thoughts were to can=url to this page http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/property-for-rent/london/houses instead of the "page=all" version but your opinion will be highly appreciated.0 -
Anybody having success with Cross-Domain canonical?
Has anyone been using rel="canonical" to attribute content that has been republished on Domain B... back to Domain A, which is the original source? The videos below say that this should be working... I am asking to hear from anyone who has done it. Has it worked as you expected? Did Domain A get the benefit that you expected? Thanks! ========== Source Videos ============= Matt Cutts (April, 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6L2N4A0hA Matt Cutts (April, 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8XdFb6LGtM Rand Fishkin (August, 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8drPXudZZc
Technical SEO | | EGOL1 -
Implement rel canonical on a Blogspot blog
Does anyone know how to implement a rel canonical tag on a Blogspot blog? I am trying to pass link juice from an old Blogspot blog to a self-hosted website.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs0 -
Adding parameters in URLs and linking to a page
Hi, Here's a fairly technical question: We would like to implement badge feature where linking websites using a badge would use urls such as: domain.com/page?state=texas&city=houston domain.com/page?state=neveda&city=lasvegas Important note: the parameter will change the information and layout of the page: domain.com/page Would those 2 urls above along with their extra parameters be considered the same page as domain.com/page by google's crawler? We're considering adding the parameter "state" and "city" to Google WMT url parameter tool to tel them who to handle those parameters. Any feedback or comments is appreciated! Thanks in advance. Martin
Technical SEO | | MartinH0 -
Which is best of narrow by search URLs? Canonical or NOINDEX
I have set canonical to all narrow by search URLs. I think, it's not working well. You can get more idea by following URLs. http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?material_search=1328 http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?finish_search=146 These kind of page have canonical tag which is pointing to following one. http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps Because, it's actual page which I want to out rank. But, all narrow by search URLs have very different products compare to base URLs. So, How can we say it duplicate one? Which is best solution for it. Canonical or NOINDEX it by Robots?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Redirect non-www if using canonical url?
I have setup my website to use canonical urls on each page to point to the page i wish Google to refer to. At the moment, my non-www domain name is not redirected to www domain. Is this required if i have setup the canonical urls? This is the tag i have on my index.php page rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com.au" /> If i browse to http://mydomain.com.au should the link juice pass to http://www.armourbackups.com.au? Will this solve duplicate content problems? Thanks
Technical SEO | | blakadz0 -
URL length - Moving from 6 folder deep to 3 folder deep
I have a website with friendly URL, My product page are generated from a database. When I click on the product, I go 6 folders deep. (ex. nameofthesite/courses-and-seminard/blablabla-catalog/information-technology/blablabla-window/blabla-server/active-directory-with-windows-server-2008.html I'm thinking about moving the product page to the thrid folder, so it would become nameofthesite.com/courses-and-seminars/course-catalog/active-directory-with-windows-server-2008.html I want to know, would it be a major element in my SEO. Is URL length is a really important factor. Because I need to move 450 pages. Second, if I move the page, do I only need to add redirect 301 or I need to do something else. I suppose I also need to change my breadcrumb navigation also.
Technical SEO | | Adviso0