sublime1 - 5:13 pm on Nov 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

We would like to implement a mechanism for tracking which link a user clicked on a page when two or more links on that page go to the same other page. Our purpose is purely to identify and track user behavior in order to improve the site experience.

We would like to embed a tag inside the filename part of the URL (rather than adding a CGI name-value pair).

For example current page name might be "widgetA-details.htm". On a page that links to this page more than once, for example the one in the left navigation bar we might put "widgetA-nav-details.htm" while the same link in the body of the page we might put "widgetA-body-details.htm".

We would implement this using apache rewrite rules, not as a 301 redirect (because the redirect would result in a spurious hit in our logs). So from the outside world, it looks like two URLs, but the resulting page will be identical.

How would Google handle this? Presumably duplicate detection would see that they are the same page, but which one gets picks as the "right" page? How about PR -- does it flow to the "right" page or both pages, and will this cause some dilution of PR. Is this something Google would see as an attempt to spoof them?

Thanks all for your thoughts on this situation.