Will google regards www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 as the duplicate content?

[JonnyGreenwood]

Our site has some affiliates, and the affiliate id is the suffix following with the url "?xxxxxx".

I can see Google Analytics regards www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 as the different page, but in fact they are exactly the same, the version www.example.com?331457 is the visit from our affiliate site.

And yesterday I start up my Moz Pro membership, and in the crawl issues I see SEOMoz thinks www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 are duplicate content.

Is this really an issue? Will the search engine thinks these two pages are duplicate content??

Thanks you guys

My first question here, not too dumb I hope.

-----------------Update----------------------

I should explain how our affiliates work.

We are an eBook related software company, and anyone can apply an affiliate account on the transaction platform "RegNow" even without our permission because we have opened the affiliate door.

When a visitor come to our order page from an affiliate site, the url will add the affiliate ID suffix "?xxxxxx", and it's combined in cookies. After the deal is done, the affiliate gets his commission.

So no matter how I customize the url with URL Builder, there must be the suffix "?xxxxxx". It's the ID of our affiliate, or they will get nothing.

So the key point is, will the suffix "?331457" makes Google think www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 are different pages and duplicate content?

[BlueprintMarketing]

It is a good question. your affiliate links should be made.

No follow

[Francisco_Meza]

I agree OR they should be made using the Google URL builder. GA will start recording your campaigns.

http://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

[JonnyGreenwood]

I should explain how our affiliates work.

We are an eBook related software company, and anyone can apply an affiliate account on the transaction platform "RegNow" even without our permission because we have opened the affiliate door.

When a visitor come to our order page from an affiliate site, the url will add the affiliate ID suffix "?xxxxxx", and it's combined in cookies. After the deal is done, the affiliate gets his commission.

So no matter how I customize the url with URL Builder, there must be the suffix "?xxxxxx". It's the ID of our affiliate, or they will get nothing.

[Francisco_Meza]

Rel="canonical" it. That's my answer.

[JonnyGreenwood]

But in fact there is not a practical page which is exactly named "www.example.com?331457" on my server, I am not using WordPress, so all the pages of our site are indeed existing on our server.

You can find dozens of versions of our order page with different suffix as they are all our affiliates.

If I should use rel="canonical", then I think it might be like this:

• If Google thinks they are duplicate, then this tag will work on the "www.example.com?331457" page (although I don't think it really exists) and tell Google "www.example.com" is the original version.

• If Google doesn't think they are duplicate, this tag will not harm our site.

Is it reasonable?

[DHS_SH]

I would say that you just need to add rel="canonical" to the on each page - this will tell Google to affectivley ignore all other variations of that URL.

You could also considering using Web Master Tools to advise the search engines to refrain from indexing all of the URLs with those specific parameters - just be careful though as giving the wrong parameter instruction could result in pages you DO want to be indexed being ignored or dropped out of the SERPs.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Jonny,

As the others have said rel=canonical is the way to go, and as you describe is the way to implement. Just put the rel=canonical tag in the head of your index page (or whichever page is in question) and all the urls with your affiliate ids in them will see the same head and rel=canonical tag and you should be good to go!

[JonnyGreenwood]

Thanks dude, that's the answer I need.