URL String Tracking Question--Need help!
-
I am doing some research for a freelance project and found a URL receiving a decent amount of traffic from search with this url string after the normal page url (xxx.com/credit-card-counseling.aspx?match=e&query=debthelper.com&id=22097628847&id=1810807655)
Is this some sort of GA tracking code? Why would it be used on that page to track organic search hits if that happens automatically?
Would love some help figuring this out!
Thanks,
-
This is not a Google Analytics tracking code (you can find those specifications here).
This looks more like query parameters that were tacked on by some internal search feature or submission form. Do you have any forms or filters on your site? If so, that could be the cause. It could also be the case that some external site is linking to you and tacking on those parameters for whatever reason.
To solve this issue, just add a canonical tag to the header of all of your pages. This is an SEO best practice that can prevent things like query parameters from messing up your URLs and resulting in possible duplicate content issues. You can also block these parameters explicitly in Google Webmaster Tools, but I would start with the canonical approach first.
-
Hmm not sure I understand. Why would that link url be attracting organic search hits?
-
It looks like the URL has been scraped. The tags don't conform to Analytics tag conventions. You can find more on that here.
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
-
Tool to check page size for multiple url's at once
In Google Analytics under Site Speed > Page Timings, you can see all pages and their loading time compared to the average. This is very handy to check which pages maybe need some optimization. I would also like to check the size for these pages in a similar way. There are multiple tools out there like GTmetix and Pingdom that give specific information and performance insights. The problem is that they are limited to check one url at a time. Does someone know about a tool to check the page size of multiple url’s at once (and if possible to easily export to Excel)? That way I can check which pages are big in size and research/optimize them. Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | Mark.0 -
Track subdomain in analytics
Hi, Our jobs section has recently been moved on to a subdomain https://jobs.ourwebsite.co.uk/home.html which is handled by a third party. Our analytics for the jobs section was lost as no code was added to the pages. Previously it was part of the main site. How do I track it as a subdomain so that it appears to be part of our main site? We have the old GA and universal GA code on the site Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Houses0 -
Bounce Rate Question - The percent calculated does not add up
Hello All, I'm attempting to see why organic search bounce rate has increased by 5% when compared to last year for a certain section of my website. I am using a custom segment to filter the specific pages I want to look at. Once the custom segment is set, I go to Acquisition - > Channels - > Organic. Then, I click the Landing Pages tab. Because we don't have keyword data anymore the only thing I can look at is the landing pages that contributed to the change in bounce. Finally, I set my date range and compare to the same date range as last year. Once I set the date range I am presented with a list of URLs and the percent change in bounce rate for each URL. This is where I get confused. If you look at the average bounce rate at the top of the column (example 1 attached) it does not add up with the data below it. If you export all of the data to excel, and then do an "Average" function in Excel, the data adds up to 17.29% instead of 35.04% for Sept. 2013. Why does this not add up? Isn't GA calculating the Average? Also, I always notice several URLs with only 1 session per URL. Several of these 1 session URLs have a 100% bounce rate. Since the bounce rate at the top of the column (example1) is a reflection of the average bounce rate, wouldn't these 1 session URLs significantly distort my data? I ultimately just want to see the pages that are contributing to the increased bounce rate when compared to last year. Having a hard time figuring this one out. Thank you all, Dave zMfAGls
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Google Analytics tracking code for completely new website
Hello! I use Google Analytics to monitor our company's websites. In the coming weeks we will roll out a brand new website for one of our brands to replace its current site. The domain name will remain the same. My question is, should I use the same tracking code that's been used on the existing site for the new site, or is there a benefit to creating a new tracking code? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO
Erik0 -
Has anyone experienced Google Analytics track the page visit to a "thank you" page, but not the goal conversion?
Has anyone experienced where Google Analytics would track the page visit to a "thank you" page, but not the goal conversion that should result? The goal had worked for a long time as it is as just a goal url with head match. No funnel. Not case sensitive. For about four days now, no conversions have been recorded, but Google Analytics shows hundreds of people visited the page that should trigger the goal. Additionally, we have received the hundreds of leads. A Screaming Frog search shows the code is embedded throughout the site. For the interested, the GA code looks like (and the 8 Xs are the correct number on the site): Am I missing something?
Reporting & Analytics | | 352inc0 -
How can I track search engine optimization data in Google analytics?
My website is linked to a Google Analytics web property. But, I am not able to track search engine optimization data in Google Analytics. So, How can I get it done?
Reporting & Analytics | | CommercePundit0 -
Strange 404 Error URL
Can anyone help determine how a URL like "www.mycompany.com/lago_www.bad-nsfw-content.com" would appear on the "not found" crawl error list in Google Webmaster Tools? The "www.bad-nsfw-content" site has nothing to do with our company and I don't how it would get associated with our site.
Reporting & Analytics | | pbhatt0 -
Creating a Filter in GA to track Parent Category
I don't know if the title makes sense, but here's my question... Our newspaper website has multiple categories like World, Sport, Entertainment etc. Now, a story, belonging to the entertainment section maybe published on the entertainment page but is likely to have a slot somewhere on the Home page as well as other pages. The same goes for stories in sport etc. However, the url displays the date folllowed by the post title and thats it, no category name. Now, a user may end up going to a detailed story that belongs to the entertainment section (from the home page or any other page) without actually having visited the entertainment page. However, for tracking purposes, we want to see how many hits we got on the entertainment page and any story belonging to that particular section. So, my question is how do I go about creating filters that can help me track category page and detail story hits as one? Or, should I ammend the url structure (keep in mind we are using wordpress for our news website) to include category after the date and would this solve my problem of tracking? I asked a similar question recently but maybe I did not explain myself clearly. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RishadShaikh590
