Duplicate penalty via querystring?

querystring doesn't change page content

[roodle]

I want to add various links to my homepage like:

href="some-page.htm?x=1&x=2#something"
href="some-page.htm?x=1&x=2&x=6#somethingelse"
href="some-page.htm?x=2#someotherthing"

In all cases the querystring is purely for presentation purposes, i.e. there's really nothing different on "some-page.htm" except some CSS changes (according to the x values) and where the page is auto-scrolled via the anchor name.

My question is, will Google spider these pages as separate pages and penalize me for duplicate content? I would hope that since the base page is identical in all cases no dupe filter would be triggered, but I'm not sure.

Please tell me I have nothing to worry about.

[theBear]

The answer to your question is that you are setting yourself to duplicate your content.

Not good, not good at all.

[CainIV]

Copy the page, name them different url's, then link to them using noindex, nofollow and google will not penalize you.

[Chris_H]

I've made that mistake in the past with dire consequences.

Try to find another way to control elements on your page, such as passing a form value, session value or cookie.

Don't mess with the original querystring, as any change, however little will be construed as a separate page.

[roodle]

Thanks for your replies.

The querystring is handled using javascript, otherwise yes, I'd gladly make the page dynamic and use a session var or a form.

I've thought of a rough and ready way round this. Basically to use 2 identical versions of the page, one which blocks robot indexing (for the above type links) and the other linked to normally with no querystring etc. Only downside is I'll lose the potential keyword gain from text in all the links with querystrings, but the functionality gain for visitors I think will compensate.

[Chris_H]

A wise move. I can't think of any issues or problems with your solution.

[johnhh]

I also have made this mistake - I confess my sins -

we had

page?variable1=x&variable2=y
and
page?variable2=y&variable1=x

linking from from different sections of the site ( hence the error as written at different times)

result: a duplicate content penalty

I added a bit of code to detect the order of the variables and write a nofollow noindex where required.

Luckily it was not affecting the important pages as I had all the links correct on those.

It is interesting that on another of our sites I have the same problem but no penalties appear to have been applied ..yet