Adding parameters in URLs and linking to a page

[MartinH]

Hi,

Here's a fairly technical question:

We would like to implement badge feature where linking websites using a badge would use urls such as:

domain.com/page?state=texas&city=houston

domain.com/page?state=neveda&city=lasvegas

Important note: the parameter will change the information and layout of the page: domain.com/page

Would those 2 urls above along with their extra parameters be considered the same page as domain.com/page  by google's crawler?

We're considering adding the parameter "state" and "city" to Google WMT url parameter tool to tel them who to handle those parameters.

Any feedback or comments is appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Martin

[ThompsonPaul]

You're actually in the reverse position of most people dealing with URL parameters, Martin. By default, the Search Engines consider different parameters to be different pages and most users are struggling with how to make the SEs understand they're all one page to avoid duplicate content issues.

In your case, you want the SEs to treat those pages according to the way the SEs normally do, which means you "shouldn't" need to do anything extra to get them indexed separately. That's what's naturally going to happen.

I'm with you on the hinting in Google Webmaster Tools though. May as well use that capability to confirm for Google that you do want those parameters indexed. You should do the same thing in Bing Webmaster Tools as well. Kind of a "belt & suspenders" approach.

Paul

[MartinH]

Thank you for your feedback Paul.

Well, I guess I didn't explained myself correctly because we do want to have all the parameters considered 1 page!

Our goal is 2 fold:

1- Have the parameters in the URL considered 1 page in order to have 1 page with many links pointing to it in order to have higher page authority (instead of 20+ pages with lower authority).

2- Keep the user experience relevant by display and organizing the page content based on the referring url (in our case the links from badges).

So in other words how do we (if possible) make sure google and bing consider all parameters as combined page?

Thanks again!

Martin

[ThompsonPaul]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, Martin. I was misled by this statement:

... the parameter will change the information and layout of the page

If the content of the page will truly be different depending on the parameter, the search engines are probably going to consider them separate URLs no matter what you do.. That's their whole definition of separate pages.

If the parameter simply rearranges a page's content (e.g. creates a different sort order for the same products) then combining the pages can usually work.

If you want to try to combine these pages for ranking purposes anyway, the tool to use is the rel=canonical tag. You insert it into the header of the custom parameter pages pointing back to the primary page.

Google is clear though that canonical tags are taken as suggestions only, and if it thinks your pages should actually be indexed separately, it will ignore the canonical.

You could then back this process up by using Bing & Google WMT to specify that the ?state= and city= parameters are to be ignored. But the above caveat still applies.

Paul

[MartinH]

Thanks Paul. You confirmed our understanding.

Another head is always better!

Thanks again.

Martin