Why is Benetton ranking with tracking parameters?
-
For this search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=benetton&pws=0
I see the following URL ranking #1
http://www.benetton.com/?utm_source=centrum.sk&utm_medium=listing
Why is this happening? I could likely figure it out but I'm busy so I was hoping someone could dig around and let me know
Anyone?
Incidentally, Benetton is in the middle of a massive campaign at the moment so it's strange timing for them to have this showing up and screwing with their GA tracking...
EDIT: I should clarify, Benetton is not a client - I don't know anyone who works for or with them. I'm just curious why this is showing up.
-
They have links on that domain with that exact tracking parameter. Maybe a campaign at one point?
-
Tom
Looks like a crazy combination of things;
1. Search [site:benetton.com] and it reveals their Italian page it.benetton.com as their intended 'home' page.
2. The Italian page does not have a robots meta tag, therefore it is indexed but only in google.it
3. Go to google.it and search [benetton]... annnd... you get the Italian site, no tracking URLs - site-links etc, per normal.
4. So the 'robots noindex/nofollow' on the www page must be because they're trying to index the Italian site but not the US site? I'm honestly not an expert on the correct way to handle these international issues. They have basically two identical sites on separate sub-domains, the only difference being the language. Doesn't seem like the right way to handle this to me...
5. www.benetton.com does not redirect properly for /index.html or /index.htm
6. Because of all of this, Google USA is not given a homepage on the www subdomain to index.
7. BUT, there is an internal link (at least one I can identify) pointing to http://www.benetton.com/?utm_source=centrum.sk&utm_medium=listing on this page on the blog - so the robots noindex/nofollow is ineffective because Google likely sees the presence of the tracking parameters and thinks its a different page? Or this is one of the few times where Google can choose to ignore the canonical tag (as they have said its a strong directive).
(As a side note, many of their other www US pages have noindex/nofollow, but there are still about 2,500 pages in the index from the US site.)
Conclusion
- Benetton is attempting to have their Italian version of the site be the main website, they are incorrectly attempting to not index the US site.
- Links internally and externally with that tracking parameter are the only indication to Google US for the homepage.
- Because of incomplete homepage redirection (and perhaps one of the few instances where Google ignores the canonical), they have indexed the page with the tracking parameters.
Thoughts? Does all that makes sense?
-
I'm slightly confused though - why is the tracking id using centrum.sk/?
I see that the BBC is linking to them, not sure if this is cause or effect:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15778377
Maybe they just googled Benetton and lifted the URL?
-
I agree tweaking my google search the link drops out if i search on the last hour but shows up for other time periods. As you say it has links from all over the web pointing to it e.g BBC news is running an article on the campaign. I am guessing this a case where they are trying to limit the campaign showing up in the results judging by the write up on the various news outlets.
-
OMG - yeah not only the weird tracking parameters URL but the main homepage (www.benetton.com) is noindex, nofollow which I suspect will screw things up a little..... Wow.
-
While I don't have the answer, I did notice a few other curiosities....
The page is tagged noindex, nofollow
The page shows a header code of 304
There are a lot of backlinks to the particular URL. Even a Google search of the url shows over 100 listings.
A wild guess....there are a lot of sites with fresh links to the page using that specific URL. The page shows viral content, images of President Obama kissing other world leaders. It has led to a spike in traffic. One of the tweaks in Google's new freshness change may have allowed this anomaly to slip through.
I have also seen results stating Benetton pulled the Pope version of an image after legal action was taken. There may be some scrambling on Benetton end which is causing confusion as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
Hi, This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain... We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best. Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much. In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress). Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA? If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain. But if it is technically part of the powerful domain... Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog? I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in advance. J
Reporting & Analytics | | JabeKay0 -
Track buttons in Google Tag Manager
Hi! First question: I am wondering if it's possible to track two buttons with the same code in Google Tag Manager without changing the code? There are different page URL's.. Second one: My tags are displayed in Google Analytics as 'events'. When I put the events in 'goals', the number of times it fired differs from my events. Someone who can help me with this issue?
Reporting & Analytics | | conversal0 -
Google Analytics Campaign Tracking overriding each other
Howdy, fellow mozzers. So, here is the situation: Let's say someone comes to the website through Organic Google Search, and first thing they see is the banner on the website, on a click of which it takes you to a promotional landing page. I have this banner being tracked with GA campaigns. Now, here are my questions: If that user makes a purchase, which source / medium it will be assigned to? Organic/google or website/banner? (as far as i understand it assigns it to website/banner) If that's the case, is there way to find out afterwords where the website/banner sessions came initially from? If there is no such way, how shall i setup the tracking to be able to see wherre the initial visit to the website came from, yet also track how many people clicked on the banner and made a purchase? Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | DmitriiK0 -
Analytics not tracking traffic from Old Domain Redirect
We've recently 301 redirected one of our client's domains to their new website and the strange thing is, we aren't seeing an increase in traffic in analytics. You would expect the traffic to increase roughly by the traffic volume from the old domain. There were a few hundred redirects and we tested a large sample and the redirects have been implemented properly. Is there something that we did incorrectly in our implementation of the domain redirect? Or is there something else that we need to do in Analytics to properly track those redirects?
Reporting & Analytics | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Rankings UP, rankings DOWN - why?
Last week, I had 14 keywords go up and less than 5 go down. I was so thrilled! Except this week, I had 10 go up and 14 go down! How can I figure out what is going on? I am up and down 30+ spots with Google. I'd really like to stay up. My site is pretty new, just a few months. I am still fiddling around with settings trying to follow all the advice I read. (robot meta tags, title tag) I didn't change any content in the last week. Does SEOmoz analyze the ranking data?
Reporting & Analytics | | dealblogger0 -
Ga event tracking and GAC code placement
Just relaunched website and since then specific event tracking has zeroed. I copied event tracking directly from old site so it should work. Overall analytics are fine. Only variable I can think of is where google analytics code is placed. Does GAC code need to be on HTML header or at end of body specifically for event tracking to work? Example: Steripen.com/freedom/... When user clicks "REI" icon, this tracks an event that a user clicked on one of our"retailer links." Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | Timmmmy0 -
How to remove unwanted dynamic parameters from a URL in Google Analytics
Hi, Would really appreciate some help with this. I have been experimenting with RegEx to achieve this but as I’ve never used it before am currently failing miserably. We have conversion pages i need to set goals for that are formatted as below: https://www.domain.co.uk//Application_Form/(S(ewhbqp5cki0mppuzukunkqno))/enterCardDetails.aspx I need to remove the (s(xxx)) section from the URL as rather than one pages i currently have thousands of unique URL's. What’s catching me out is that as it’s not a URL parameter I can’t discount and as half way through can’t just do head matches etc to /entercarddetails Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sarbs0 -
Is IP tracking of visitor allowed?
Hi, Google Analytics does not provide IP addresss of the visitors. What if i develop some in-house tracking mechanism to do so? Is it allowed or will Google penalize me if it comes to know about it? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | IM_Learner0