"Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks: There's no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that."

and...

1. "When we detect duplicate content, such as through variations caused by URL parameters, we group the duplicate URLs into one cluster.
2. We select what we think is the "best" URL to represent the cluster in search results.
3. We then consolidate properties of the URLs in the cluster, such as link popularity, to the representative URL.

Here's how this could affect you as a webmaster:

• In step 2, Google's idea of what the "best" URL is might not be the same as your idea. If you want to have control over whether www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell or www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black gets shown in our search results, you may want to take action to mitigate your duplication. One way of letting us know which URL you prefer is by including the preferred URL in your Sitemap.
• In step 3, if we aren't able to detect all the duplicates of a particular page, we won't be able to consolidate all of their properties. This may dilute the strength of that content's ranking signals by splitting them across multiple URLs.

...
...

In summary: Having duplicate content can affect your site in a variety of ways; but unless you've been duplicating deliberately, it's unlikely that one of those ways will be a penalty. This means that:

• You typically don't need to submit a reconsideration request when you're cleaning up innocently duplicated content.
• If you're a webmaster of beginner-to-intermediate savviness, you probably don't need to put too much energy into worrying about duplicate content, since most search engines have ways of handling it.
• You can help your fellow webmasters by not perpetuating the myth of duplicate content penalties! The remedies for duplicate content are entirely within your control. Here are some good places to start."

Echoing what Nick said, conventional wisdom is that it used to be (and
probably still is) better for search engines -- search engines are
better and better about handling this sort of stuff so it may not be a
big deal these days.

One thing to keep in mind though is to avoid multiple paths to the same output.

For example, don't let example.com/a/1/b/2 and example.com/b/2/a/1
resolve to the same thing -- enforce ordering in your parameters. The
reason is that some search engines may get confused and think you have
multiple copies of the same file which can negatively impact how that
one page ranks.

Avichal

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Nick Sullivan<[address removed]> wrote:
  

There are SEO benefits from the the directory/structure/approach. Search
engines don't typically index items in the query string, and if they do,
they are given a lower weight.
So this:
/search/q/php/development
Will rank higher than:
/search?q=php+development

-Nick
On Sep 1, 2009, at 8:45 AM, Robert Gonzalez wrote:

Is it really just a matter of how it looks?

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 2:16 AM, Scott Hildebrand <[address removed]>
wrote:
    

So this project I'm involved with is doing queries this way:
/search/q/music/l3/ukiah/lid/2449750/l2/California/l1/United
States/r/300/jt/+/i/+/c/+

It basically amounts to search being the controller, and then the rest are
key/value pairs. When there's no value it ends up just being "+"

I think that's fugly and I'd rather see a traditional URL:
/search?q=music&l3=ukiah&lid=2449750&l2=California&l1=United
States&r=300&jt=&i=&c=

Is there any reason why a traditional URL would be better, or am I just
outnumbered by the other engineers and out of luck?






--
Please Note: If you hit "REPLY", your message will be sent to everyone on
this mailing list ([address removed])
http://www.sfphp.org/
This message was sent by Scott Hildebrand ([address removed]) from The
San Francisco PHP Meetup Group.
To learn more about Scott Hildebrand, visit his/her member profile:
http://www.sfphp.org/members/3940753/
To unsubscribe or to update your mailing list settings, click here:
http://www.meetup.com/account/comm/
Meetup Support: [address removed]
632 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 USA

      

--

Robert Gonzalez
http://www.robert-gonzalez.com




--
Please Note: If you hit "REPLY", your message will be sent to everyone on
this mailing list ([address removed])
This message was sent by Robert Gonzalez ([address removed]) from
The San Francisco PHP Meetup Group.
To learn more about Robert Gonzalez, visit his/her member profile
To unsubscribe or to update your mailing list settings, click here

Meetup Support: [address removed]
632 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 USA




--
Please Note: If you hit "REPLY", your message will be sent to everyone on
this mailing list ([address removed])
This message was sent by Nick Sullivan ([address removed]) from The San
Francisco PHP Meetup Group.
To learn more about Nick Sullivan, visit his/her member profile
To unsubscribe or to update your mailing list settings, click here

Meetup Support: [address removed]
632 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 USA
    

--
Please Note: If you hit "REPLY", your message will be sent to everyone on this mailing list ([address removed])
http://www.sfphp.org/
This message was sent by Avichal Garg ([address removed]) from The San Francisco PHP Meetup Group.
To learn more about Avichal Garg, visit his/her member profile: http://www.sfphp.org/members/8279265/
To unsubscribe or to update your mailing list settings, click here: http://www.meetup.com/account/comm/
Meetup Support: [address removed]
632 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 USA