Query String Indexing Problem

by 4 replies
5
So I looked up my site on Google (site:domain.com) and I see a lot of duplicated content from my site. Examples:

/page/2/
/page/2/?kjhkjdshkshd
/page/2/?start=1

All of these URLs point to the same page with the exact same content.

I am think canonical URLs would fix this issue ... am I right? I am using HeadSpace2 and it doesn't provide canonical links.

Will canonical fix this, or should I try redirecting these query strings to the original pages?

And how should I deal with the pages already indexed in Google?
#search engine optimization #indexing #problem #query #string
  • Hi DeskCoder,

    Try to follow best practices by not using different URLs that point to the exact same content.

    Use the Canonical link element to tell Google which URL is the canonical link for your content.

    Canonical Link Element - YouTubeAbout rel="canonical" - Webmaster Tools Help
  • I am not using different URLs, they are just showing up somehow. I went all through my site and I can't track down where they are coming from.

    WooRank is linking to a couple of these, but I have no idea where the others are coming from.
    • [1] reply
    • Hi DeskCoder,

      Try this software, it will crawl your entire website and create a list of every link on every page:

      Find broken links on your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM)

      If the links are coming from outside your website, the canonical link element should help to resolve the issue. Just ping those pages after you add the canonical link tag, to send the search bots back to re-crawl those pages.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Thanks for the link ... it didn't help me find the querystrings, but it did help me find some holes in my site.

    I switched from HeadSpace2 to Yoast (of course the importer didn't work), but it added canonical to the header.

    Should I ping these sites, or crawl them as Googlebot in the Webmaster Tools ... or both?
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