URLs: Removing duplicate pages using anchor?

[Bio-RadAbs]

I've been working on removing duplicate content on our website. There are tons of pages created based on size but the content is the same.

The solution was to create a page with 90% static content and 10% dynamic, that changed depending on the "size" Users can select the size from a dropdown box.

So instead of 10 URLs, I now have one URL.

• Users can access a specific size by adding an anchor to the end of the URL (?f=suze1, ?f=size2)

For e.g:

Old URLs.

• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size2
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size3
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size4
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size5

New URLs

• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size2
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size3
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size4
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size5

Do search engines read the anchor or drop them? Will the rank juice be transfered to just www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?

[celilcan2]

Go to google webmaster tools

1. On the Dashboard, under Crawl, click URL Parameters.
2. Next to the parameter you want, click Edit. (If the parameter isn’t listed, click Add parameter. Note that this tool is case sensitive, so be sure to type your parameter exactly as it appears in your URL.)
3. If the parameter doesn't affect the content displayed to the user, select **No ... **in the Does this parameter change... list, and then click Save. If the parameter does affect the display of content, click Yes: Changes, reorders, or narrows page content, and then select how you want Google to crawl URLs with this parameter.

[Bio-RadAbs]

Thank you Celilcan2,

• I'll set it up as 'yes' and it  'narrows'  the page
• What is the perk of doing this though? Will Google not count anything after the parameter as something or value, it would focus on just the single URL?

[celilcan2]

Please say YES

[Everett]

Cyto,

The Google Webmaster Tools parameter handling, in my opinion, is often best left up to Google. In other words, I rarely change it. Instead, I try to fix the issue itself. In your case, here is what I would advise:

Instead of using a parameter in the URL, use cookies or hidden divs to change the content on the page to the different size. Have a look at most major online retailers. You can select a size or color from the drop down and it never changes the URL.

If this is not possible, I recommend the following:

Ensure the rel = "canonical" tag on all of those pages references the canonical version (e.g. /product-alpha-size1) which will consolidate the link-related metrics like PageRank into the one page.

[Bio-RadAbs]

Thanks Everett,

• Rel="canonical" is in place, so that's covered
• The urls with the parameter are only accessible if you want to directly access a particular size. If you are on the default page and switch sizes from the dropdown, no URL change is presented.
• I have left webmaster to decide what should be crawled or not. The parameter has been mentioned though.