Duplicates of Home page with strange parameters

[stassaf]

This post is deleted!

[kchandler]

Assaf - are all of the different queries bringing up the same exact page for end users? If so then a canonical link would definitely do the trick.

I would also look into where these URLs are coming from to help prevent them in the future. Some things to think about could be:

• Does your websites content management system generate them?
• Are other sites linking back to you with those URLs?

Hope this helped!

• Kyle

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Hi Assaf,

In your case, you should definitely add the rel canonical tag to your homepage. In general, I think it makes sense to use the rel canonical to prevent issues just like you've written about.

Parameter handling in webmaster tools is more to block Google from crawling those parameters or tell them how to treat the parameters you use on your site - for your issue, the canonical tag should do the trick. You can refer to Dr. Pete's article here on the Moz blog for this issue and similar canonical issues.

Bottom line - on your site, use the rel canonical tag.

Hope this helps,

Mark

[stassaf]

Hi Kyle,

thank for your response.

• we've our own CMS and it doesn't generates these parameters - we're 100% sure

• it's from inbound links - how to find these inbound links?

• are you 100% sure a canonical link that we'll also point to itself is a good practice here?

Thanks,

Assaf.

[stassaf]

Hi Mark,

thank for your response.

read the post on the blog: "...and I’ve seen no evidence in recent history of a properly used, self-referencing canonical causing any harm..."

is this still the case? couldn't it change over the time and cause a huge problem?

will google remove the variations (links with parameters) from it's index after canonical will be implemented?

Thanks,

Assaf.

[Mark_Ginsberg]

That post was from a week ago - it's still relevant, for sure.

The variations should be removed - canonical is an indicator to the engines, it's not going to destroy your site if you canonical pages to themselves.

I use the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin on all of my own/client sites, and he has the self referencing canonical there as well. I think it's just good practice to prevent the types of issues you have mentioned.

To find the links to your site with these parameters, use Open site Explorer from Moz, and also check the links mentioned in Google Webmaster Tools - it's under the traffic section in the navigation. They'll both let you download lists of external links pointing to your site, and then you can see the links that are causing these parameters.

[kchandler]

The first place i would look for finding the inbound links is OSE following these few steps:

1. Put your full domain into the input box and hit search
2. Choose the inbound links tab and filter to show "all" links from "only external" pages to "pages on the root domain" and "show links ungrouped". The click filter.
3. Once it filters click the "download CSV" button.
4. Open the CSV, in the very last column to the right there will be a list of all the destination pages coming from inbound links.

From there you can map across the rows to see which websites are using those queries in their links. As for the question on the canonical - yes i believe this is the correct approach to help direct all authority to the correct, non query pages. Just make sure you implement it correctly so you do not canonical ALL the pages of your website to your homepage.

Regards - Kyle

[stassaf]

Thanks!!!

[stassaf]

Thanks Kyle!