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minstrel · #11 (**permalink**) 09-15-2007, 07:58 AM

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Originally Posted by handcrafteduk

Now, these are both the same page (I have since stopped Google indexing pages which include the zenid). Would this be classed as duplicate content? And, would it be having a negative effect on my ranking? If so, do you know how long it will take Google to 'forget' these zenid pages?

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Originally Posted by crankydave

Are there pages identical to the zenid pages without the zenid? The reason I ask is because if there's not, then you will lose those pages altogether.

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Originally Posted by handcrafteduk

Sorry Dave. Yes, there are pages identical to the ones with the zenid's but only one page in each case.

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Originally Posted by crankydave

It is *possible* that the duplicate pages were harming your rankings. It's also *possible* that they were simply being filtered. It is a good idea either way, to only allow the SE's to index one copy of the page.

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Originally Posted by chowell

I agree w/ Dave. Just give it more time... the engines will filter out the pages that they're not supposed to be seeing. Once they filter them out, they should no longer be a duplicate content penalty (risk).

There is no duplicate content "penalty". There is a duplicate content filter - what that means is Google will genrally index one page and ignore the others. To ensure that Google chooses the one you want indexed, block the others using robots.txt, as handcrafteduk has done with the ?zend pages.

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Originally Posted by Clint1

Even G and the G employees have said that URL's with "?" in them can be "problematic" to index. Dupe content or not, there's no way of knowing if any issues may be due to dupe content, or the "?" in them.

That's incorrect and has been for quite some time now.

Google and Dynamic Pages

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If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.

Update to our webmaster guidelines
By Vanessa Fox
Wed, Oct 25 2006

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As the web continues to change and evolve, our algorithms change right along with it. Recently, as a result of one of those algorithmic changes, we've modified our webmaster guidelines. Previously, these stated:

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Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index.

However, we've recently removed that technical guideline, and now index URLs that contain that parameter. So if your site uses a dynamic structure that generates it, don't worry about rewriting it -- we'll accept it just fine as is. Keep in mind, however, that dynamic URLs with a large number of parameters may be problematic for search engine crawlers in general, so rewriting dynamic URLs into user-friendly versions is always a good practice when that option is available to you. If you can, keeping the number of URL parameters to one or two may make it more likely that search engines will crawl your dynamic urls.

The Duplicate Content Penalty Myth
Mar. 15, 2007
Jill Whalen

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One of the most prevalent misnomers being bandied about is the phrase "duplicate content penalty." I'm here to tell you that there is no such thing as a search engine penalty for duplicate content... Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that the search engines like and appreciate duplicate content -- they don't. But they don't specifically penalize websites that happen to have some duplicate content.

Duplicate content has been and always will be a natural part of the Web. It's nothing to be afraid of. If your site has some dupe content for whatever reason, you don't have to lose sleep every night worrying about the wrath of the Google gods. They're not going to shoot lightning bolts at your site from the sky, nor are they going to banish your entire website from ever showing up when someone searches for what you offer. The duplicate content probably won't show up in searches, but that's not the same thing as a penalty.

...

In order to supply its users with a variety of information on their search query, search engines have created duplicate content "filters" (not penalties) that attempt to weed out the information they already know about. Certainly, if your page is one of those that is filtered, it may very well feel like a penalty to you, but it's not -- it's a filter.

Search engine penalties are reserved for pages and sites that are purposely attempting to trick the search engines in one form or another. Penalties can be meted out algorithmically when obvious deceptions exist on a page, or they can be personally handed out by a search engineer who discovers an infraction through spam reports and other means. To many people's surprise, penalties rarely happen to the average website. Most that receive a penalty know exactly what they did to deserve it.