Rel - canonical vs 301 redirect

[DavidS-282061]

I have multiple product pages on my site -  what is better for rankings in your experiance?

If I 301 the pages to 1 correct version of the product page - or if I rel caanonical to the one correct page?

[cfguti]

Hi,

In my experience rel canonical if the product pages have an ID or session identification but are the same pages.

I only do 301 if the pages have different content os something like that.

Bye!

[irvingw]

The Walrus is correct.

1. Canonical the pages
2. Update your sitemap.xml file to include only the canonical URLs you want Google to index
3. Go into your Google Webmaster Tools account under: Site Configuration > Settings > URL Parameters - to help avoid unintentional duplicate content indexing as well

301 is more for obsolete pages that you want to point to new pages so you can retain PR (although 301's still lose a little bit of PR) and also used to avoid any guests from getting a 404 error from bookmarked or links pointing to that page.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

You should read this http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066#301

Google seem to prefer 301 re-directs where possible, but in your case it may be much more straight forward to use the canonical tag. It was created pretty much for times where you have variations on a product (such as different colour shoes but otherwise identical, each with a separate page)