Query string in url - duplicate content?

[pauledwards]

Hi everyone I would appreciate some advice on the following.

I have a page which has some nice content on but it also has a search functionality. When a search is run a querystrong is run. So i will get something like mypage.php?id=20 etc.

With many different url potentials, will each query string be seen as a different page? If so i don't want duplicate content.

So am i best putting canonical tags in the head tags on mypage.php ? to avoid Google seeing potential duplicate content.

Many thanks for all your advice.

[Highland]

The short answer: yes and yes

Anything that changes in the URL, even one character, will be seen as a new page

[pauledwards]

Thanks for that.

So mypage.php i will add a canonical tag which says mypage.php is the original page for the content.

This will then mean Google will only value mypage.php as the unique content - not any pages with a different query string in for example pages such as mypage.php?id=10&sport=football.

[marcelo-275398]

You may not even have to bother with a canonical tag depending on your set up,

You may be able to amend the parameter settings in webmaster tools.

[pauledwards]

Could you explain more please, i've not tried that before.

Kind Regards,

[rhutchings]

Yes, the best way is to handle via webmaster tools, and not try to handle via code on the sites.  In your Google webmaster tools account, go to "Site Cinfiguration" and "URL Parameters".  It will show you a handful of dynamic urls it has detected, how it is handling them currently.  Then you can manually add a dynamic parameter that exists on your site and tell google how to handle it.  They have a bunch of new options/features with this tool that makes it really useful now.