Sorting and Duplicates

[freelistfool]

I have a new site where the user can sort the results by several columns in a given list. On pages where there are only one or two items in the list the page is basically the same even though the URL is different (?sort=columnX).

Will this cause a big duplicate page issue with G? If it does, what will be the likely result in G's index?

[jonrichd]

My guess is that if it causes a duplicate content issue, it will mean that Google will only list one version of the page, rather than all of them.

Before you get all worried, first consider how the page accomplishes the sorting. If it's through a series of normal links, then there might be an issue. If it's through a form (drop down list) or Javascript, Google may never see the other versions of the page.

Also, you might be able to use robots.txt to exclude the sorted versions from Google's index. If some reasonable version of the page appears when you display it without using the sort parameter, you could exclude pages with that parameter from the index.