Google's John Mueller said on Reddit that Google can handle and deal with having multiple URLs for a single web page, but it is not a good practice. He said it makes it harder for Google and Google will just pick one URL anyway.
I mean, none of this is new but hey, I heard this thread got some recent attention. Google will canonicalize duplicate URLs to the same page, always. Do you want to ensure the canonical URL Google has in its index is the one you want or not?
John wrote that "It's fine" if you have multiple URLs for the same page but he added, "but you're making it harder on yourself (Google will pick one to keep, but you might have preferences)."
Of course "there's no penalty or ranking demotion if you have multiple URLs going to the same content, almost all sites have it in variations," he added. But he added, there is "a lot of technical SEO is basically search-engine whispering, being consistent with hints, and monitoring to see that they get picked up."
So why? Why?
Forum discussion at Reddit.
