Canonical solution for query strings?
-
Greetings,
The Hotel company where I'm employed uses query strings in it's url's to track customers.
The query strings are integrated into our property management system, and they help identify who we need to pay commissions to, so they aren't going anywhere.
While I understand that session variables could have been a better solution, I sort of inherited this problem.
The issue I'm running into is that my Webmaster tools picks up these query strings as actual url's.
So for instance: www.url.com/index.php?P_SOURCE=WBFQ
Seems like a duplicate page of my root, and like wise for all my other pages that use our booking widget.
So, Is there a canonical solution to this issue? or would 301/302's be the only solution.
Also, we may have 10 different but specific query strings to put into our urls. Would the 301/302 approach cause any server issues for say 10 pages? So 10 pages x 10 access codes = a lot of redirects.
Thanks in advance,
Cyril
-
Short answer Yes.( as long as you have rel Canonical them back to the original page ). Google will drop the other pages over time
Things you can do here :
- Make sure your sitemap is not listing these extra urls
Thing I recommend you DONT do
- noIndex the dynamic pages - adding a noindex could tell google not to index those pages, but some one could link back to that page with P_SOURCE=WBFQ and the main page gets no benefit from that
- ask for manual removal ( because google does not like it when we ask them To get the right "version" of your site indexedhttp://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1269119 )
Hope that answers you questions
-
Sweet! Glad to know I can eliminate an option.
I'll ask you the same thing I asked Thomas, will the query'd urls eventually drop off once google decides which version is best?
Thanks Saijo
-
Hi Nola504
301 redirect is certainly NOT your solution .. if you 301 redirect www.url.com/index.php?P_SOURCE=WBFQ to your homepage , that is the page visitors will be redirected to ( the ?P_SOURCE=WBFQ will be stripped off , I dont think that is what you want )
Rel canonical will tell Google , thay are all the same page with the same content and it will only show the main url that you nominate as the Canonical url ( in most cases , I have read about some study which claims at times google might decide for itself which is the better page )
Moreinfo http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
-
Thanks for the info Thomas,
I only added the canonical tag about a month ago, do you think over time those query links will eventually die off?
-
Adding in the canonical tag for each page should solve this problem. We use query strings as well for tracking sources and referrers. Canonicals are a solid solution for what you described.
But the fact that Google is finding that URL is another problem. If Google continues to find the URL after your canonical insertion then you may want to 301 redirect that particular string.
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
-
Ecommerce site product reviews, canonicals – which option to choose?
Recently, I discovered that only the first 4 reviews on our product pages are crawled and indexed. Example: http://www.improvementscatalog.com/eucalyptus-deep-seat-furniture-group/253432 I'm assuming it's due to the canonical that's on the product page http://www.improvementscatalog.com/eucalyptus-deep-seat-furniture-group/253432" />. When you click on page 2 of the reviews, the url does not change, but the next batch of reviews appears on the product page. Same with page 3, etc… The problem is the additional pages are not being crawled and indexed. We have to have the canonical on the product page because our platform creates multiple urls for each product page by including each category where the product resides, related link parameters, etc in the product url (example: http://www.improvementscatalog.com/eucalyptus-deep-seat-furniture-group/patio-furniture/outdoor-furniture/253432) – trust me, it gets ugly! I've researched other Moz answers and I've found that there appears to be a couple of ways to fix the issue. Any ideas/help/guidance/examples on the below options is greatly appreciated!!!! Show only 4 reviews on the first page and place the remaining reviews on a new page by themselves (similar to how Amazon does it). However, I would rather keep all of the reviews on the product page if possible. Add page 2, page 3, etc parameters to the url to display the remaining reviews and adding rel=prev/next. If we chose option 2, would each product page have a different canonical? If so, would it create a duplicate content issue since the above-the-fold content, title tag and meta descriptions would all be the same? Also, would you include each additional page in the sitemap? We had a similar issue with our category pages and we implemented the "viewall" in the canonical. Would that work for our reviews? Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | Improvements0 -
Rel="canonical"
Hello guys, By fixing the duplicate meta description issues of my site I noticed something a bit weird.The pages are product pages and the product on each one of them is the same and the only difference is the length of the product. On each page there is a canonical tag, and the link within the tag points to the same page. www.example.com/Product/example/2001 <rel="canonical" href="www.example.com/Product/example/2001"></rel="canonical"> This happens on every other page. I read twice and I think I will do it again the post on GWT and I think that is wrong as it should point to a different url, which is www.example.com/ProductGroup/example/ which is the the page where all the product are grouped together. Cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Canonical and Alternate REL
Hi I have a website which is mostly dynamic content from a database. In the header of the site I have a function which outputs the rel="canonical" link and in some cases the canonical is the page the user is visiting and not another page on the site but I still show it in the source. However we have just recently launched our mobile website which is stored on an M DOT domain (i.e. m.mydomain.com) which has different URL's to my main website so following Google's recommendations we have created rel="alternate" links on my desktop site to point to the equivalent mobile pages and on the mobile pages I have created rel="canonical" links which point back to the relevant desktop site keeping everything tidy.
Technical SEO | | yousayjump
My question is, is there an issue with having both a rel="canonical" and rel="alternate" in the source of of a single page on my desktop site? Is it conflicting or detrimental in anyway? Thanks for reading0 -
Will rel=canonical work here?
Dear SEOMOZ groupies, I manage several real estate sites for SEO which we have just taken over. After running the crawl on each I am find 1000's of errors relating to just a few points and wanted to find out either suggestion to fix or if the rel=canonical will resolve it as it is in bulk. Here are the problems...Every property has the following so the more adverts the more errors. each page has a contact agent url. all of these create dup title and content each advert has the same with printer friendly each advert has same with as a favorites page several other but I think you get the idea. Help!!! .... suggestions overly welcome Steve
Technical SEO | | AkilarOffice0 -
Rel Canonical tag using Wordpress SEO plugin
Hi team I hope this is the right forum for asking this question. I have a site http://hurunuivillage.com built on Wordpress 3.5.1 using a child theme on Genesis 1.9. We're using Joost's Wordpress SEO plugin and I thought it was configured correctly but the Crawl Diagnostics report has identified an issue with the Rel Canonical tag on the sites pages. I have not edited the plugin settings so am surprised the SEOMoz Crawl has picked up a problem. Example: Page URL is http://hurunuivillage.com/ Tag Value http://hurunuivillage.com/ (exactly the same) Page Authority 39 Linking Root Domains 23 Source Code Considering the popularity of the plugin I'm surprised I have not been able to find tutorials to find what I'm doing wrong or should be doing better. Thanks in advance. Best Nic
Technical SEO | | NicDale0 -
Canonical URLs and screen scraping
So a little question here. I was looking into a module to help implement canonical URLs on a certain CMS and I came a cross a snarky comment about relative vs. absolute URLs being used. This person was insistent that relative URLs are fine and absolute URLs are only for people who don't know what they are doing. My question is, if using relative URLs, doesn't it make it easier to have your content scraped? After all, if you do get your content scraped at least it would point back to your site if using absolute URLs, right? Am I missing something or is my thinking OK on this? Any feedback is much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | friendlymachine0 -
Canonical Tag Pointing To The Same URL
Does it matter if a canonical tag points to the URL in which the tag is on? Example Page: http://www.domain.com Canonical tag: rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" /> I only ask because a client of mine has a CMS that automatically does that to every page on the site and there's no way to remove it. Will this have a negative impact or does it not matter at all? Any insights would be great because I can't find a clear answer anywhere online. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Query String Redirection
In PHP, I'm wanting to store a session variable based upon a link that's clicked. I'm wanting to avoid query strings on pages that have content. My current workaround is to have a link with query strings to a php file that does nothing but snags the variables via $_GET, stores them into $_SESSION, and then redirects. For example, consider this script, that I have set up to force to a mobile version. Accessed via something like a href="forcemobile.php?url=(the current filename)" session_start(); //Location of vertstudios file on your localhost. Include trailing slash $loc = "http://localhost/web/vertstudios/"; //If GET variable not defined, this page is being accessed directly. //In that case, force to 404 page. Same case for if mobile session variable //not defined. if(!(isset($_GET["url"]) && isset($_SESSION["mobile"]))){ header("Location: http://www.vertstudios.com/404.php"); exit(); } //Snag the URL $url = $_GET["url"]; //Set the mobile session to true, and redirect to specified URL $_SESSION["mobile"] = true;header("Location: " . $loc . $url); ?> Will this circumvent the issue caused by using query strings?
Technical SEO | | JoeQuery0