How to properly handle these search results pages

[cakelady]

I work with Afternic.com and they are restructuring their website. The current search results pages generate tons of duplicate content, but it's not so clear to me what the best solution.

Navigation links to all of these pages which are exactly the same and do not generate content on the specific url indicated. The results all display on variations of the url names.php

http://www.afternic.com/names.php?feat=1

http://www.afternic.com/names.php?cls=1

Then they have this page with categories:

http://www.afternic.com/categories.php

And when you select a category, it generates sort results of names.php

Now because there is no real content on names.php I'm wondering if all these url variations ought to have a rel canonical tag for names.php or if they should be blocked. If blocked, it seems we're stuck with a page that doesn't display any content.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[BenFox]

You don't want to implement a canonical tag to names.php.

For all of the categories that generate URLs like this

http://www.afternic.com/names.php?c=1

You probably want to implement a URL rewrite to give them more user friendly URLs (like afternic.com/business or some such).

It would also help to throw some unique content onto those pages if you've got the budget for it but that's on the assumption that you want those pages to generate search traffic.

Hope that helps a little