arikgub - 6:09 pm on Apr 25, 2011 (gmt 0)

I have a scenario in mind where 301 can not be applied. Let's say we have the URLs like

http://example.com/widget.php?color={color}

where the {color} is some widget characteristic (e.g color) that is passed via GET request.

Now assume, that widget.php is the default product page for widgets. But optionally, the {color} para meter can be used to determine the widget image and the widget color attribute that will be displayed to the user.

On one hand, the pages are not exactly the same - they can not be 301'ed without changing user experience. On the other hand, they are almost certainly considered as dup content by Google.

What would you do?

If you choose to set the default page version (widget.php without any GET parameters) as your canonical, then I am wondering how Google treats the incoming links to a the different variations of the page. Is it equivalent to having all the pages 301'ed to the default page version in this regard?