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I have been thinking about how to design the site structure for a new project I am launching soon, and I was hoping to get some additional input from WW members.
Currently, a URL could look like this:
www.site.com/fruits/prices.php?product=apple&quantity=5
(quantity can be 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)
1) The pages contain prices and short descriptions, but not a lot of text. Depending on the quantity, the only thing that changes are prices. => Duplicate content?!
What I thought I could do to avoid duplicate content issues is rewriting the URLs. For instance:
www.site.com/fruits/apple-prices.html (quantity=1)
www.site.com/fruits/2/apple-prices.html (quantity=2)
www.site.com/fruits/3/apple-prices.html (quantity=3)
www.site.com/fruits/4/apple-prices.html (quantity=4)
...
I could then nofollow/noindex the directories 2, 3, 4 and so on. Does that make sense?
What if somebody links to, say www.site.com/fruits/3/apple-prices.html - if I noindex that directory, I would not get any credit for the link, or would I?
Any suggestions?
Cheers, Chris
How about using:
www.example.com/fruits/apple-prices?quantity=1
as your published URL format?
Internally rewrite that to /fruits/prices.php?product=apple&quantity=1 so your script gets invoked properly, and then externally redirect direct request from known search engine spiders (only) from www.example.com/fruits/apple-prices?quantity=1 to www.example.com/fruits/apple-prices
The only trick is that your redirect must check the request header to be sure that the request for /apple-prices?quantity=1 was the result of a direct client request, and not that of the internal rewrite. However, in this case, that may not be a problem, because direct client requests would not have the "product=" name/value pair appended to the URL.
Jim
Years ago the thinking was that you should create a separate product page for each attribute or quantity.
As duplicate content filters started appearing I began utilizing the tactic of creating one product page with drop-downs, radio buttons, etc. for options/attributes. This eliminated the duplicate content issue while still providing the ability to purchase the product in the configuration(s) the visitor is seeking.
If I'm off-base, let me know.
