Canonicalization and Tabs

Google

[AJVMtl]

I was wondering if I can get someones opinion.
I have a page with four tabs found in it. The landing page would have a URL something like: /some-product?overview. The other tabs are hyperlinked and when clicked reload the page. The URLs for the other tabs would be something like: /some-product?articles, /some-product?press and /some-product?data.
How is Google viewing these URLs and pages? Is Google considering them different pages or children of the same page? The <title> and <meta name="description"> will change slightly per-page.
Would I need to implement cononicalization?
What is the SEO hit if any in this type of structure?
What would be best practice in this type of situation?

Thanks

[phranque]

Those are different URLs.
The part after the question mark is called a query string.

[AJVMtl]

As they are query strings, would Google understand that these pages are associated? Or, are they just considered separate pages? If they are considered separate pages how would I associate them?

[phranque]

those would be considered separate and distinct documents but they could be associated if you added the appropriate link rel elements in the document head.

[not2easy]

You might want to read about how to let Google know that you would like these pages to be considered as a sequential "unit": [support.google.com...]

Depending on their content this may or may not be the correct way to handle your content.

[AJVMtl]

Thanks for the answers. The content in these pages are basically representing one product. Each tab contains information about the product, datasheets, media, etc... If I look at the source codes of the rendered pages, they currently all share the same <title>, <meta description>, <meta keywords>, etc... This kills the products global SEO value.