Query Strings causing Duplicate Content

[Rooted]

I am working with a client that  has multiple locations across the nation, and they recently merged all of the location sites into one site. To allow the lead capture forms to pre-populate the locations, they are using the query string  /?location=cityname on every page.

EXAMPLE -

www.example.com/product

www.example.com/product/?location=nashville

www.example.com/product/?location=chicago

There are thirty locations across the nation, so, every page x 30 is being flagged as duplicate content... at least in the crawl through MOZ. Does using that query string actually cause a duplicate content problem?

[MoosaHemani]

If query string is the only choice you have in order to identify location then why not using canonical on the page. This will tell Google what the preferred version of the page is and so Google will only index the preferred version and avoid all other form of the URLs.

This way you will be able to use query string and avoid duplicate content at the same time.

Hope this helps!

[Alick300]

Completely agreed with Moosa. you can also check below post.

http://blog.woorank.com/2013/03/a-guide-to-clean-urls-for-seo-and-usability/

Hope this helps.

Thanks