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The title might be a little bit confusing. Well, I noticed that someone had used a page's URL for backlinking or indexing his keywords.

This is what he did:

The normal url:

http:// .....Default.aspx

He edited the normal url to:

 http:// ..... Default.aspx?places-to-buy-wedding-dresses

So Now (what I think) the person have been making backlinks for the edited url. So when I search for the actual site. Then the edited url shows up in google. (also the normal url, with a description of the edited url.)

So the edited url doesn't actually exist. It's just created as Default.aspx?..

Any explanations? This didn't happened to my site, just noticed it in another site. How can I do avoid this happening to my site?

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This is a good reason to put a canonical tag in each of your pages. If http://example.com/Default.aspx has a canonical tag like <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/Default.aspx"/>then when somebody links to http://example.com/Default.aspx?places-to-buy-wedding-dresses it will also have that canonical url. Googlebot will see the canonical, and only index the page without the extra parameter.

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  • Great! But if I use links like: http://example.com/Default.aspx?page=profile ANd so on, it will not index those pages right.? – Kilise Feb 19 '13 at 17:10
  • Put the link in back ticks to make it into code so I can see it. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Feb 19 '13 at 17:12
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    If http://example.com/Default.aspx?page=profile is an actual page, you would want the canonical tag on the page to be that url. Whatever logic you use to generate your canonical urls needs to be aware of the legitimate parameters that can be used. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Feb 19 '13 at 17:13
  • But if I got multiple links like: default.aspx?page=home, default.aspx?page=about, default.aspx?page=register and so on. What shall I put in the canonical url – Kilise Feb 19 '13 at 17:17
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    Each of those urls would have to have its own canonical url like <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/Default.aspx?page=profile"/> – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Feb 19 '13 at 17:21
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You cant physically stop people back linking to you using made up variables such as ?string, and #strings but you can rewrite these requests using 301's.

ASP.NET Site

If you don't have NUGET already I suggest you get as it contains lots of packages that you can explore and solve little questions like this with.

Using NUGET you can get ASP.NET Friendly URLS which will remove default.asp?strings or search for rewriting solutions that can remove pages that don't actually exist with a redirecting 404 page.

Apache Site

If you just linked an example that happens to be ASPX based then you will need a different solution for apache which is more likely to be your hosting if you don't use aspx. You need to use mod_rewrite and use the htaccess to remove strings using conditional rewrites.

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  • Will this help me to avoid google to index Default.aspx?places-to-buy-wedding-dresses ? Or will it? – Kilise Feb 19 '13 at 16:17
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    Take a look at @StephenOstermiller Answer by using Canonical is most likely the best method to prevent then appealing as duplicate in Googles index. Rewrites can be used also but to be honest canonical is more suited I think – Simon Hayter♦ Feb 19 '13 at 17:02

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