Duplicate content due to csref

[Petersen11]

Hi,

When i go trough my page, i can see that alot of my csref codes result in duplicate content, when SeoMoz run their analysis of my pages.

Off course i get important knowledge through my csref codes, but im quite uncertain of how much it effects my SEO-results.

Does anyone have any insights in this? Should i be more cautios to use csref-codes or dosent it create problems that are big enough for me to worry about them.

[Dr-Pete]

Apologies, but I'm not familiar with the csref parameter - could you tell me what information it passes or give me a sample URL (you can make it generic and mask your domain info)?

It sounds like some kind of tracking code, in which case it can definitely start to create duplicate content issues. You could probably use the rel=canonical tag to make Google "collapse" those pages, or you could tell Google to ignore the parameter in Google Webmaster Tools. Neither should impact your tracking.

[Petersen11]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

It is excactly a URL generated based on our tracking codes, f.eg. when i look in the list of duplicated content on our page here in SeoMoz, i get the following URLs:

http://www.tryg.dk/om-tryg/fakta-om-tryg/samarbejdspartnere/index.html?csref=Disclaimer_Nordea http://www.tryg.dk/om-tryg/fakta-om-tryg/samarbejdspartnere/index.html?csref=Bundmenu_Om_Tryg_Vores_Partnere

http://www.tryg.dk/om-tryg/fakta-om-tryg/samarbejdspartnere/index.html

The latter beeing the "original" page for this, and the two above beeing page URLs generated by URLs with csrefs, which are generated by our tracking via Omniture.

So my question is how i make sure that it do not have a negative effect on our SEO.

[Dr-Pete]

The good news is that you only seem to have about 8 of these pages in the Google index. You can use this query on Google to see them:

site:www.tryg.dk inurl:csref

Ideally, I'd use the canonical tag on those pages to strip out the parameter and de-index any duplicates, but across the site that can be tricky. You could also tell Google Webmaster Tools to ignore the csref parameter via parameter handling - it's not quite as robust a solution, but it's a lot easier to implement.

[Petersen11]

Hi,

Thanks for quick and competent reply.

I guess the reason that google only have registred 8 pages, is that many of the pages we have csref on are campaign pages, and they havent "lived" for so long yet.

As i understand you, there are two ways to proceed with this. One beeing informing in Google Webmaster Tools that google should ignore the csref-parameter, and the other beeing the canonical links.

The first is quite straight forward i guess, its just a matter of registrering in Google Webmaster Tools, that all URLs with www.tryg.dk as main domain, should not be followed by Google.

The latter im not that sure of how to proceed with, its a matter of registrering every page with csref with a cannoical link? Or how is the best way to proceed with that.

[Dr-Pete]

Yes, to set up rel-canonical properly, every page that could conceivably be tagged with a csref= parameter should have a self-referencing canonical. The tags are easy to set up, in theory, but once you get into a large site and/or CMS, setting them up on dozens or hundreds of pages can be tricky. Ultimately, it's a more effective approach that has some other benefits (like scooping up stray duplicates that may have been created by other URL parameters), but it really depends on your development resources and how complex your site is.