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That is a very weird situation and I think that, adding some canonical tags may not meet with your expectations. If Google have strong views about what is / is not a canonical URL, they will usually override canonical tags anyway (which is usually when you get the error you have described). I think we'd really need to see some examples of actual URLs to help you

Hi A Well done, you are 100% on the right track.  Go get em. Regards

Thanks Andreas, it makes sense. In this case I think I'll apply the "no index" strategy for those pages, the website has great potential and I wouldn't want to risk a bad reputation.

Cool thanks, it's nice to see some real insights on this.