Comments on: About URL Tracking Parameters and Duplicate Content Issues

By: Car Social Network

Car Social Network — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:31:06 +0000

Use mod rewrite to get rid of duplicated pages.

By: SEO Web Design

SEO Web Design — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:56:20 +0000

I do have a solution to this which have already solved our problem. However, it seem like i couldn’t get it in here. It is just a single line php code at the header.

By: CarstenCumbrowski

CarstenCumbrowski — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:59:06 +0000

Session IDs are a different kind of problem that require a different kind of solution. If you have to use session IDs, provide at least a version without session ID for the spiders. This would be an example of ethical cloaking. If you can, get rid of session IDs in the URL alltogether, they cause all kinds of problems, not only for spiders.

By: SEO Web Design

SEO Web Design — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:53:26 +0000

URL with tracking codes are not the only ones causing duplicate contents issue. PHP server-client coding has also created an issue because of its SESSION policy. Many PHP sites faced the problem of a single URL indexed by search engines at least 5 -6 times with the url as http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?phpsession=ifbsafbasofasfnasfcas983r2
and the phpsession codes are different everytime a spider crawls that site.

The best solution to solve this problem would be using “” at the header of the page.

By: CarstenCumbrowski

CarstenCumbrowski — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:39:40 +0000

Arief asked: “How about a mirror website?”

Decide on which domain will be the primary one and 301 redirect all requests to the other domains to that one. I had a client who had multiple domain names as well and all pointed to the same website (same code etc.).

The site was a dynamic website and I added to the code in every page (actually only to one script, which was included in all other scripts) to check if the current domain is the same as the master domain. If that was not the case, the script would replace the current domain with the master one and perform a 301 redirect.

I have sample code in classic ASP available on my website. See ASP 301 redirect code.

You can accomplish the same via an URL Rewrite rule in the .HTACCESS file (if you use Apache web server) or an ISAPI plugin for MS IIS like Helikons URLRewrite.

I hope this makes sense.

By: Arief Fajar Nursyamsu

Arief Fajar Nursyamsu — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:16:00 +0000

How about a mirror website?. Under company policy we have two websites (with two domain names) with the same content. I still can not figure out how to avoid the duplicate content issue.
Any idea on this? Or should I sacrifice the mirror by blocking spiders?
Waiting for your advice.
Thanks.

By: Rich Zapf

Rich Zapf — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:28:22 +0000

Great post, thank you! It sounds like I don’t need to be concerned with parameters in paid search links, but I do need to be concerned with affiliate links. What about links coming from comparative shopping sites like shopzilla and shopping.com?

By: CarstenCumbrowski

CarstenCumbrowski — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:03:47 +0000

Ignacio: You can see referral information in Google Analytics and even drill down to low traffic referrals during the selected time period. I am not aware of a feature though that lets you specify a list of predefined domains or pages that you would like to monitor for referrals. They are currently adding more and more features to Google Analytics, which makes it hard to keep up :), however, I don’t think they have this kind of option yet. The conversion goal configuration might work for this though, as a workaround. It would be worthwhile to check for sure.

By: Ignacio

Ignacio — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:42:09 +0000

Great post Carsten, congratulations!!
It is possible to do Option 4 with Google Analytics?

By: CarstenCumbrowski

CarstenCumbrowski — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 23:58:00 +0000

g1smd,
I agree with you and also believe that Google will chose the shorter URL over the one with/more URL parameters, unless the amount of inbound links (internal and/or external) suggest otherwise. I am also sure that Google is able to identify some obvious tracking parameters in the URL and ignores them automatically (as they do with obvious session IDs). But as always, you should not leave it up to chance that Google might does it right, if you can control it.

I mentioned the problem of indexed tracking URLs regarding the pollution or skewing of your tracking reports in the post. I also recommend the use of the robots META tag over the use of the robots.txt for excluding the versions of the URL that have tracking parameters. If you don’t do it 100% correctly in the robots.txt, you either don’t block it or worse, block the whole page, including the one you want to have indexed.

If Option 4 can’t be done, Option 2 is the way to go. If Option 2 is not feasible, go with Option 1. If that is also not feasible, you will have to stick with Option 3, but be aware of the side effects of it, which you and me just mentioned once more.