Canonical solution for query strings?

[Nola504]

Greetings,

The Hotel company where I'm employed uses query strings in it's url's to track customers.

The query strings are integrated into our property management system, and they help identify who we need to pay commissions to, so they aren't going anywhere.

While I understand that session variables could have been a better solution,  I sort of inherited this problem.

The issue I'm running into is that my Webmaster tools picks up these query strings as actual url's.

So for instance: www.url.com/index.php?P_SOURCE=WBFQ

Seems like a duplicate page of my root, and like wise for all my other pages that use our booking widget.

So, Is there a canonical solution to this issue? or would 301/302's be the only solution.

Also, we may have 10 different but specific query strings to put into our urls. Would the 301/302 approach cause any server issues for say 10 pages? So 10 pages x 10 access codes = a lot of redirects.

Thanks in advance,

Cyril

[Thos003]

Adding in the canonical tag for each page should solve this problem. We use query strings as well for tracking sources and referrers. Canonicals are a solid solution for what you described.

But the fact that Google is finding that URL is another problem. If Google continues to find the URL after your canonical insertion then you may want to 301 redirect that particular string.

[Nola504]

Thanks for the info Thomas,

I only added the canonical tag about a month ago, do you think over time those query links will eventually die off?

[Saijo.George]

Hi Nola504

301 redirect is certainly NOT your solution .. if you 301 redirect www.url.com/index.php?P_SOURCE=WBFQ to your homepage , that is the page visitors will be redirected to ( the ?P_SOURCE=WBFQ will be stripped off , I dont think that is what you want )

Rel canonical will tell Google , thay are all the same page with the same content and it will only show the main url that you nominate as the  Canonical url ( in most cases , I have read about some study which claims at times google might decide for itself which is the better page )

Moreinfo http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

[Nola504]

Sweet! Glad to know I can eliminate an option.

I'll ask you the same thing I asked Thomas, will the query'd urls eventually drop off once google decides which version is best?

Thanks Saijo

[Saijo.George]

Short answer Yes.( as long as you have rel Canonical them back to the original page ). Google will drop the other pages over time

Things you can do here :

• Make sure your sitemap is not listing these extra urls

Thing I recommend you DONT do

• noIndex the dynamic pages - adding a noindex could tell google not to index those pages, but some one could link back to that page with P_SOURCE=WBFQ and the main page gets no benefit from that
• ask for manual removal ( because google does not like it when we ask them To get the right "version" of your site indexedhttp://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1269119 )

Hope that answers you questions