Duplicate Content and Canonical use

[Martin_S]

We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications.

Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course.

Cheers

Martin

[Theo-NL]

I think the canonical tag would do quite well in this case, though you want want to consider a 301 redirect first. Both would require you to decide which URL is the 'main' one though, and either add a canonical tag with that URL to the other pages, or have the other pages 301 to the main one.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I can't see how letting Google know through the use of canonical tags which is the predominant page to look at, is going to have any impact on your SEO, other than a positive one. Remember that in doing this you are making positive changes.

As Theo mentioned above, you can also 301 two of the pages you dont want indexed as well.

Good luck,

Andy

[magicrob]

If the articles are also featured on individual pages I would recommend NOINDEX for 2 of those pages, and a canonical tag for the correct page.

[Martin_S]

The developer now claims that including a mon_page attribute (1&mon_page=1) within the URL will let Google know how our archiving system works and, thus, prevent us from being penalised for duplications. Any help is greatly appreciated. Trouble finding info on this.