Redirecting one domain to another using utm tags

[Sayers]

I have two live websites, which have both been live for over 10 years, so we have plenty of backlinks to both...domain1.com & domain2.com. Domain 1 and all urls is being merged into domain2.com.

So 301 redirects will be setup for every page of the site....domain1.com/abc-1234/ to > domain2.com/abc-1234/

In Google analytics for domain2.com we want to be able to see which visits we have received as a result of a redirect from domain1.com. It is possible to see these visits that come in via organic, referrals and social etc, as those will come to us with the referral as domain1.com. However, with direct traffic, i.e. if someone types domain1.com into their search bar, these visits will be assigned as direct and we are not able to tell in GA if those users have typed in domain2.com, or domain1.com to get to our webpage.

There are some suggestions in forums of adding utm_source tracking to all redirects (and add canonicals to those urls pointing to the non utm_source version), but my concern is that Google is going to have to go through one extra step to reach the page on the redirected domain.

So without the utm source code Google will follow this route
domain1.com/123/ to domain2.com/123/

With the utm source code Google will follow this route
domain.com/123/ to domain2.com/123/?utm_source... then see's canonical, so moves to domain2.com/123/

So essentially I am giving Google one extra step to follow before it gets to the equivalent page on the new site.

Is this an issue, and/or are there any other ways to track this redirection without adding extra parameters to the url?

[Sayers]

Thanks Paul,

We managed to get around the issue by using Redis to store the the url from the first domain in a temp database and then this data is used to create a custom GA dimension on the page they land on - which means we don't need to add any parameters to track these redirects.

[ThompsonPaul]

The approach you're using is correct and no, you're not really adding an extra step. That's not how canonical works.

A canonical is not a redirect like a 301. It's just an instruction (suggestion actually) to ignore the URL variables when determining the URL of the page. It will have zero effect on the transmission of the ranking authority through the 301-redirect.

The challenge you will have though, is if you create your own UTM tag to generate the source of the visit as being from the old domain1's 301 redirect, it's going to overwrite ALL the other source/medium info from the original site's visit. So domain2's Analytics isn't going to record the source of the original site1 visit as social, organic, referral etc. All redirected visits will get whatever source/medium you designated in your UTM tag.

It may be possible to programmatically catch the original traffic source on domain1 and programmatically write the UTM tags to include it in the 301, but I wouldn't know how to suggest trying to go about it.

Paul