link variables with no content change

variables in link with no HTML change

[markdidj]

Is it ok to have loads of links to the current page without the page showing a different output in the HTML?

ie...(index.php)
<a href="index.php?color=000000">black</a>
<a href="index.php?color=white">white</a>
<a href="index.php?font=italic">italic</a>

where the variables are used to change style and not content.

One of my pages has at least 50 links to itself.

[Birdman]

Actually, that is BAD! You should redesign it so that you pass the variable through a cookie or a form.

Birdman

[markdidj]

But I'm trying to make my site more accessible, and using links is the easiest way. ( easiest for the physically impaired, not for me )

[markdidj]

Is it a bannable offense, or will it just lower the page rank for the offending page. I don't want to take it out to please Google, like I did with my display-hidden dynamic menus a few years ago.

[jrrich]

I understand what you're doing and it could be bad. There are several server applications that create these types of URLs to serve different content, and in effect, create separate pages. I have worked on sites that are built using Mach II (a ColdFusion application) and the urls look like:

index.cfm?event=about (the About page)
index.cfm?event=shipping (the Shipping page)

Google recognizes these pages as distinct URLs, even though they're all built off the index.cfm page.

Where you could run into trouble is with duplicate content. If Google recognizes index.php?color=000000 and index.php?color=white as two separate pages, even though they are the same page with different font colors, it will register the separate pages as having duplicate content.

What you need to do is test it out and see what google indexes. If it indexes all of the pages, then you have a problem. If it indexes only one then you'll be all set.

[vincevincevince]

There is absolutely no problem with it. Unless... the background colour of one is very close to the text color.

I have stickied you a solution for your problem.