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#1 2012-05-07 09:11:02
- mmelon
- Member
- Registered: 2006-03-02
- Posts: 95
[howto] query strings and duplicate content
Hi,
I know some people have problems with query strings being indexed in search engines. I myself wonder if the various ways to hit an article or an article list, can upset google.
If you’ve never tried it, here’s some of the txp specific url keywords that can return a list of articles
Anyway, does it not make sense to include the following in the head, and simply prevent any urls with query strings from being indexed?
<txp:php>
global $pretext;
if($pretext['qs']) {
$robots = '<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>';
} else {
$robots = '<meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp,noydir"/>';
}
echo $robots;
</txp:php>Seems quite severe but I can’t think of a single example (on an average content/brochure site) when you would need a url with a query string indexing.
What do we all think?
Mike
Last edited by mmelon (2012-05-07 09:14:41)
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#2 2012-05-07 11:29:16
- els
- Moderator
- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: [howto] query strings and duplicate content
Hi Mike, wouldn’t specifying a canonical URL do the same?
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Re: [howto] query strings and duplicate content
As far as pretext goes, page_url can return any value it holds.
<txp:variable name="qs" value='<txp:page_url type="qs" />' />
<txp:if_variable name="qs" value="">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow, noodp, noydir" />
<txp:else />
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
</txp:if_variable>Offline
Re: [howto] query strings and duplicate content
I do the same as Els and specify a preferred canonical URL. I believe you can also tell google in google webmaster tools what the queries denote in an url (of course that’s just google).
Seems quite severe but I can’t think of a single example (on an average content/brochure site) when you would need a url with a query string indexing.
Possibly on sites where long lists of articles are paged.
FWIW, you can also do your snippet without php…
EDIT: jukka was faster…
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