Google Indexing 2 Copies Of The Same Page - using query strings

[narsticle]

I have a relatively new site that is first getting indexed in Google. The directory structure is as follows

www.exampledomain.com/a
www.exampledomain.com/b
www.exampledomain.com/c
etc.

I am noticing Google indexing some of the pages like this:

www.exampledomain.com/a/?N=D

in addition to indexing

www.exampledomain.com/a

When you click the www.exampledomain.com/a/?N=D it just takes you to what would normally be at www.exampledomain.com/a/

This can obviously become a duplicate content problem. This is a static site so i dont know where these dynamic delimeters are coming from. Why is google indexing this and what can be done to avoid a duplicate content penalty?

[Chico_Loco]

This is an Apache query string that indicates the sort preference of a directory's contents when using AutoIndex ie. when there is no index.htm page and just contents of the directory and listed.

You can usually sort by name and last modified time (I think) - these dynamic URLs were most likely found via. that auto-index page.

As for the SEO implications - I wouldn't worry about it too much unless there are thousands of them. Eliminate any links that may still exist to them though.

[edited by: Chico_Loco at 2:25 am (utc) on Sep. 3, 2007]

[narsticle]

i think what might have happened is Google crawled directories i created before i actually had index pages. There are not thousands of them and there are no further links leadsing to any pages without indexes. There are about 15 of these pages indexed. Do i need to take any proactive action or just wait it out and let Google figure out with are the correct pages to be indexed? Thanks

[jd01]

I would worry about them, because they are duplicates, and can be fixed easily...

Here is a recent thread about what can happen with extra QUERY_STRING URLs. In the following thread they are in the form of session IDs: [webmasterworld.com...]

There are also some suggestions about how to find them and get rid of them. I personally remove all QUERY_STRINGs from requests using mod_rewrite, so I don't have to worry about them for any reason.

Justin