Duplicate Content with URL Parameters

[seoman10]

Moz is picking up a large quantity of duplicate content, consists mainly of URL parameters like ,pricehigh & ,pricelow etc (for page sorting).

Google has indexed a large number of the pages (not sure how many), not sure how many of them are ranking for search terms we need.

I have added the parameters into Google Webmaster tools And set to 'let google decide', However Google still sees it as duplicate content.

Is it a problem that we need to address? Or could it do more harm than good in trying to fix it?

Has anyone had any experience?

Thanks

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Have you considered using either a canonical URL or using robots.txt to prevent Googlebot from seeing these URLs in the first place?

[seoman10]

Canonical URL is a good point, what about pages that have already being indexed possibly for a search term?

Are these going to drop off the rankings?

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

'Easy', just check if these kind of pages are getting a lot of search traffic. Usually that isn't the case with filter/order pages, so if they drop in rankings it won't cost you search traffic.

[seoman10]

Err-umm, next question then how do I check 3700 pages+ that have this problem for traffic?

(Other than turning into a night owl and having to purchase a new mouse :-))

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

If you know what URLs there are they probably have a common URL parameter that you could check for in your reports on landing pages. That would make it very easy to check the result for this with a couple clicks. If you want to go advanced than identify the URLs that have issues and run them through the Google Analytics Reporting API

[seoman10]

Think I've sussed it.

There is only about three or four main parameters so went to GA, Behaviour more > site content > all pages

Then did a search for part of the parameter name, sure enough you are right only a handful of visits.

Many Thanks

Is duplicate content of this sort actually a major issue?  Especially considering Google should already know from Webmaster tools that these are parameter pages.