Setting canonical url to escape Google penalties for duplicate content

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Setting canonical url to escape Google penalties for duplicate content

federico2005

2:08 am on Apr 7, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hello,
I need to escape Google penalties for duplicate content on a shopping section of my website.
The pages are something like "example.com/products.php?price=..." or "example.com/products.php?color=..." .

What is the best SEO solution?
Is ok setting up a canonical url for these pages? If that is the case, would be it ok placing inside products.php file something like the following code snippet?

[size=4]<HEAD>
<LINK REL"CANONICAL" href="http://example.com/product.php?color=red">
</HEAD>[/size]

Thanks

Planet13

8:18 am on Apr 7, 2012 (gmt 0)

What is the difference between the two pages?

example.com/products.php?price=

example.com/products.php?color=

Are they showing the same products but in a different order?

Are they showing different products?

Is the text the same or different on the two pages?

federico2005

8:41 am on Apr 7, 2012 (gmt 0)

example.com/products.php?color=red is showing products with color red and with different prices,
example.com/products.php?price=100 is showing products with price 100 and with different colors.
Obviously I can also have
example.com/products.php?color=red&price=100
example.com/products.php?price=100&color=red
that are showing the same products for sure.
And i have other parameters like "sort" etc... that make pages showing same products.

But the point is, there is high probability that the same products, that means the same content, is also published on many other affiliates sites and of course on the merchant site.
My pages publishing products catalog have nearly 0 original content, so probably they differentiate from other affiliate sites publishing same product catalog, only for a different template.
Is that duplicate content putting me in danger to get duplicate content penalties?

netmeg

4:01 pm on Apr 7, 2012 (gmt 0)

If you have nearly 0 original content on those pages, and they make up a significant percentage of your site, then I'd say that a duplicate content filter (not penalty) is the LEAST of your worries.

Planet13

4:09 pm on Apr 7, 2012 (gmt 0)

If you have nearly 0 original content on those pages, and they make up a significant percentage of your site, then I'd say that a duplicate content filter (not penalty) is the LEAST of your worries.

I agree with netmeg.

The pages color=red and price=100 are internal SEARCH pages and you should noindex them. google should NOT have your internal search pages in the results.

You need original content instead that is tightly focused.

It is not as important to have LOTS of pages ranking as it is to have THE RIGHT pages ranking.