Ranking affected by URL tags?

[camaro194]

My site has been consistently maintaining the same rank in a search. But after I release several URLs with tags used for tracking, my rank started dropping. I read somewhere that if you have a ? in the URL it will not get read properly by the spiders. Any idea how a search engine could be using these new URLs in a negative way?

For example, my original url was:
www.mydomain.com

The new URLs that I had available were:
www.mydomain.com/?key=blue+shoes

Thanks in advance.

[brian.mark]

It could very well be a duplicate content issue. Since I'm assuming you're showing the same content regardless of what the parameter is, that would be duplicate content.

I did some changes on our site so that a parameter set a cookie and did a 301 redirect back to the correct page. Maybe you can do something similar.

Brian.

[camaro194]

Thanks for the help.

What I'm trying to find out is:
Will a search engine view URLs with tags on them as spam? If so, this is going to reduce my rank. Anyone have any info regarding this?

[cspelts]

I agree with Brian - duplicate content penalty.

[camaro194]

But how is it a penalty? It is the same destination. The only difference is that the URL contains tracking tags so I know where the click came from. I understand how a spider can disregard these tagged URLs, but why would they penalize me? Any additional info would be very beneficial.

Thanks,
Brian

[seo learner]

if i am not wrong then redirect is also not liked by the spiders.....brian!!

[cspelts]

Originally Posted by camaro194

But how is it a penalty? It is the same destination.

But with a different URL the search engines see them as different destinations, all with identical content. As for a penalty, it just means that Google will drop all but one of these "copies."

Originally Posted by seo learner

if i am not wrong then redirect is also not liked by the spiders.....brian!!

A 301 is a permanent redirect - it's search engine friendly!

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by seo learner

if i am not wrong then redirect is also not liked by the spiders.....brian!!

302 (temporarily moved) is not liked and not handled well by bots / spiders / engines in general. 301 (permanently moved) is handled fine.

Brian.

[camaro194]

Originally Posted by cspelts

But with a different URL the search engines see them as different destinations, all with identical content. As for a penalty, it just means that Google will drop all but one of these "copies."

Ok, I can deal with that. You wouldn't happen to know which one it would drop, do you?

Brian

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by camaro194

Ok, I can deal with that. You wouldn't happen to know which one it would drop, do you?

Brian

For Google, normally the one with the lowest PR is dropped (from my experience). That means if a site with a PR 9 links to one of your tracking URL's, that's the one that will most likely show. Using the 301 approach would allow your own page to gather most of the passed on rank and not have to worry about which one will show.

Brian.