Lots of dublicate titles and pages on search page

[KasperGJ]

I own a paiting website with a lot of searchable paintings.

The "search paintings" feature creates tons of dublicate pages and titles.

See here:
http://www.maleribasen.dk/soegmaleri.asp

I guess the problem is, that the URL can actually be different and still return the same content.

First time you click the "Search paintings" the URL will shown as above. But as soon as users
begin to definere they search to the left and use the "Search button" the top URL changes.

So, depending on how the top URL looks different results are shown. This is pretty standard in searches.

But it returns tons of dublicate pages and titles.

How, do you guys cope with that?

Is there a clever way to use ref="cannonical" or some other smart way to avoid this?

/Kasper

[webtheoria.com]

Yes you could use a canonical tag for every single page you have (which you have thousands as I discovered).

The other issue that you are facing is that your URL's are not user friendly. If you had some friendly URL's it would be easier for Google to understand your pages.

As for the canonical tag please use a sample as the below:

[KasperGJ]

Thanks for your answer. So, what do you recommend? I have access to programmers, so I can make the changes that needs to be done. Just not sure how to do it.

[webtheoria.com]

Your webmaster should as the tag for you.. your programmer would be able to handle the issue with the friendly URL's but that's a complicated process because they should redirect the old pages to the new...

[KasperGJ]

Ok, can u explain a bit more? I'm a programmer myself, so I might do it myself.

But i'm guessing that i need to install something on webserver to create those urls, and then use a permanent 301 redirect on the old urls to the new ones?

[webtheoria.com]

Yes, in an addition to the canonical tag you will need to setup the redirects. But am not sure how you would do that on microsoft server.