Does having a page that ends with ? cause duplicate content?

[MarloSchneider]

I am working on a site that has lots of dynamic parameters. So lets say we have www.example.com/page?parameter=1

When the page has no parameters you can still end up at www.example.com/page?

Should I redirect this to www.example.com/page/    ?

Im not sure if Google ignores this, or if these pages need to be dealt with.

Thanks

[TakeshiYoung]

Google does treat pages with parameters as separate pages. The best way to avoid this is by not linking to pages with no parameters like example.com/page? Redirecting something like this would be tricky, so I would recommend just putting in a canonical tag in the header for parameter pages that don't significantly change the content of the page.

[DCochrane]

Do you have a version of each page. www.example.com/page & www.example.com/page?   ?   Then yes this is duplicate content.

[Mike.Goracke]

Hi Spencer,

You can check relatively easily whether Google is ignoring it or not.

Type the following into a Google search: site:www.example.com/page?

If you see: www.example.com/page?parameter=1 AND www.example.com/page? in the SERP, then YES, Google is seeing duplicate content.

If you only see one version, that means that Google is probably ignoring the other version. Google does understand that some content management systems naturally produce “duplicate content.” In these cases Google just ignores one of them. If you think about it, this makes sense. If you have two very similar URLs with the same content, it probably isn’t intentional that you’d have duplicate content; however, if you have two VERY different URLs and have duplicate content on those… THEN you’d be a little more concerned.

Hope that helps.

Mike

[KevinBudzynski]

Also, instruct Google on the way you want them to handles parameters (in webmaster tools).