Hello! I'm just wondering how everyone deals with this...

Say I've got a URL that looks something like this:

www.example.com/page.html?a=nothing&b=nothing&c=nothing

I want google to index the main page:

www.example.com/page.html

but i don't want them to index it with all the query strings attached (there are hundreds of different variations).

my problem is that I still get lots of backlinks pointing to the query string pages, and i don't want to lose all that link juice. so i'm a bit worried about slapping a noindex on them. i don't want to point their canonical tag straight to the main page either (minus the query strings), because I'm worried that will lose me the link juice as well -- because the backlinks don't point to that page.

ideally i want all that link juice to be transferred straight to the main page (minus the query strings).

option 1: slap a noindex on all the query string pages, and have the canonical tag write out the URL in full (including all the query strings), and hope that google passes on the link juice to the main page.

option 2: keep index on all the query string pages, but point the canonical tag to the main page (minus the query strings), so the query string pages don't actually get indexed