Duplicate Page Content for sorted archives?

[jwondrusch]

Experienced backend dev, but SEO newbie here

When SEOmoz crawls my site, I get notified of DPC errors on some list/archive sorted pages (appending ?sort=X to the url).

The pages all have rel=canonical to the archive home.

Some of the pages are shorter (have only one or two entries).

Is there a way to resolve this error?  Perhaps add rel=nofollow to the sorting menu? Or perhaps find a method that utilizes a non-link navigation method to sort / switch sorted pages?

No issues with duplicate content are showing up on google webmaster tools.

Thanks for your help!

[Marcus_Miller]

Annoyingly, the SEOMOz crawler does not yet take the rel=canonical into account so creates these misleading reports.

You can always check to see if both pages are indexed in Google to make sure they are only indexing the correct one to be sure

info:www.url.com/page.php?sort=x

info:www.url.com/page.php

Both should just show the main URL without the ?sort=x name / value pair and if so, Google is correctly referring the value of the sorted page to the archive home.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

[jwondrusch]

Thank you, Marcus, that helped a great deal!

They both show the correct URL, so I'll disregard those errors

[Dr-Pete]

Actually, except in isolated cases, I believe we do parse rel=canonical. I know there are some weird exceptions (such as conflicting canonical tags).

Agreed, though, that the canonical itself should be fine in this case. You could block your sorting from the crawl by putting it in pull-down, for example (not create the URL at all). You could also block the sort= parameter in Google Webmaster Tools. Generally, though, I like canonical better than GWT for this.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Peter

I have had this a problem a couple of times when it is not picking up on the canonical tag, any ideas what could cause that?

Cheers

Marcus

[Dr-Pete]

If you've got a couple of examples, I'd be happy to take a look and/or ping the Product team. Just DM me or email at [peter at seomoz dot org].

[Marcus_Miller]

Cool, ill dig them out and fire over. Thanks. Marcus