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
-
The best way to track internal links in Google Analytics
Hi there, we are a retail business and we have invested in quality editorial content which sits in our Blog at ourwebsite.co.uk/blog/ The Blog links to the main site (an online store) and I want to track the 'value' of the blog by how many clicks the blog content generates back to the main store. At the moment we're using this code on the end of every link in the Blog: ?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=Widget&utm_campaign=FromBlog Does this affect SEO and is there a better way of doing it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bee1590 -
Canonical Tags & GWT Parameters
A site I'm working on has canonical tags which I find to be accurate, regardless of tracking parameters or anything else added to the url. The tag looks like: And we have alot of parameters in Google Search Console that look like Parameter Crawl page Let Googlebot Decide destination Let Googlebot Decide filters Let Googlebot Decide Since all of our parameters follow a question mark, like http://www.examplesite.com/questions/avocados?source=ad12345 and all of our pages have canonical tags showing the representative url without the additional parameters, why wouldn't we just have the one parameter in GWT as Parameter Crawl ? Representative URL I ask because I find that Google analytics shows pages with parameters as landing pages in search, which has me concerned about Google seeing it as duplicate content. Thanks! Best... Darcy
Reporting & Analytics | | 945010 -
Google Tag Manager Tracking
We have Google Tag Manager set up to track our website https://kontenta.co.uk/ Although we have a blog - https://kontenta.co.uk/designroom/ I'm just wondering if it's better to track the sites separately? If so, how do I add the blog to tag manager? Does it need setting up as a filter to match the regular expression https://kontenta.co.uk/designroom/* We just need to figure out the best way to measure both the website and blog traffic and if users are coming from the blog to the site, and what interactions they are making. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Jseddon920 -
How do I add subdomain tracking to an existing Google analytics account that was set up to track website only (without the subdomain option)
I know you can track subdomains by just selecting the proper code when you set up the analytics and then create filters for the data in analytics. But how do you add a subdomain for existing analytics website. Is there a way to go back and change to the option to include subdomains and then I assume just replace the tracking code with the new code that Google delivers for this?
Reporting & Analytics | | rhgraves650 -
How can I see keyword rankings past 50?
The rankings in the campaigns appear to be limited to tracking terms in the top 50. is there a way to view past that? I understand that for the most part no one is ever going to see past that so 50+ might as well be 5000. But a client has requested for a handful of key terms. If this is not possible, can someone recommend another tool I might use? Thank you! Kevin
Reporting & Analytics | | yandl0 -
How to track link building? What metrics?
I'm an SEO newbie (my main roles are front-end designer and content manager).
Reporting & Analytics | | RSGregC
I've been managing our company's effort to generate links. In the past, trying to develop relationships has gone nowhere. As a result, we're currently mostly creating good content ourselves and posting it on Web2.0 sites (weebly, etc.) and linking back to our site, and then using UAW (unique article wizard) to create a second tier of links to those links. We've been doing this for a while, and our traffic from SEO is going up - but we don't really know how to track our work. Can you please
a) give your opinion about our approach, and
b) tell me which metrics we should be using, and which tools for these metrics? Thank you so much
Greg0 -
Cross Domain Goal Tracking
I am trying to set up conversion tracking on a new website. The traffic will be landing on example.com, but the final step of the transaction takes place on app.example.com. This is the first time I have ever done something like this and Google's documentation does not have a lot of details about how to do this in GA. Does the tracking code need to be installed on example.com and app.example.com? when setting up the goal page does it need to be /landing-page/thank-you or app.example.com/landing-page/thank-you is this well documented in google's help finals and i am just calling it the wrong thing?
Reporting & Analytics | | Simple_Machines0 -
Analytics, Traffic and Rankings. Something is wrong, can you answer it? ;-)
So I've been monitoring analytics to see where our clients are ranking for terms that have brought visitors to the site over the last month to find that the website isnt ranking in the top 100 for that keyword. What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think this could happen? One of the keywords has brough over 700 visitors in the last month yet is not in the top 100 for this term. I've also looked Google Webmaster Tools and have found that the exact same term hasn't had 700 impressions let alone 700 click throughs! Weird! Cheers, Sean
Reporting & Analytics | | 0111001101100100