How to prevent channel identifiers from showing up in the SERPs?
-
We append our urls with channel identifiers (?cid) to help us analyze where traffic is coming from. Recently, our appended urls with channel identifiers are showing up in the SERPs. How can we stop this from happening and prevent in the future? Has anyone had similar issues?
-
Ugh, yeah, I definitely don't like seeing those parameters indexed. Reaching out to the Moz team to see if anyone has used Adobe Experience Manager. If it weren't a CMS or analytics setup issue, I do think rel=canonical would be a good fit here, but it's possible there are better setup options for the product that I'm not aware of. Once they're indexed, though, it's typically going to mean rel=canonical or a redirect to get rid of them. You could use Google Search Console, but they've pulled back a lot of the parameter handling options (at least temporarily) in the new version.
-
We use Adobe Experience Manager
-
For example, if you google Morningstar Direct, the first organic search results include ?cid=RED_DIR0001. As you scroll through the search results, there are other instances of this happening.
-
Yeah, you may have options in your CMS. Challenge at this point is that those URLs are already indexed, so if you change your CMS settings to use a different kind of identifier (again, we're being very fuzzy on details) you may still need a solution to de-index those URLs.
-
What platform do you use for your website / shop? there can be other and more easy ways to correct this than the re-cononical.
But like Dr. Peter J. Meyers asks, need abit more information / link or something to help you with the best solution for youre current platform
-
There are a couple of ways to go about it, but this is a situation where the rel-canonical tag is probably your best bet. It'll attribute all of those URLs back to the parent URL, set up correctly. If you can provide some specifics (or even a semi-fictional example), I can try to give you more guidance.
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
-
Phantom search results showing up in analytics
Hi, I'm getting these weird phantom search results showing up in my analytics account which is skewing my results. I have a wordpress site, and I do have some custom search results pages, but analytics is telling me these hits are coming from google- which I doubt. The end of the query string (&cat=plus-5-results) is not coming from a link created within my site. Anyone have any ideas? Failing that, would somebody be kind enough to explain how I can ignore these hits, but retain other, valid search result requests? Thanks reading! Will Screenshot%202019-05-16%20at%2022.32.10.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | madegood0 -
Two of Four Google Analytics Views Not Showing Data
Question for you MOZ friends: We added two new views about a week ago, the same views that we have added for more than 50 Accounts, and they are not showing any data. The views are for 'Filtered Traffic' (no IPs or spam) and 'Organic Only' including only the organic medium. Any ideas why this may not be working? First time we've come across this and couldn't find much help researching it... Thanks as always! street%20ga_zpsorfdnemi.png
Reporting & Analytics | | ReunionMarketing0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
Most of the goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Hi All, I have already asked this question twice here but issue is not resolved yet. http://moz.com/community/q/all-goal-conversion-in-google-analytics-showing-under-referral http://moz.com/community/q/some-goal-conversion-in-google-analytics-showing-under-referral In Google analytics most of the goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral from payment gateway sites (Paypal.com & epdq.co.uk). I have applied all the possible solution that suggested by Moz community experts & Google Adwords support team but it is not resolved yet and it is really weird answer to give client that I have applied all possible solution and issue is still not solved. Lastly I am sharing Cross domain tracking code here that I have used on my site. Please check once and let me know if code is correct and If not correct please help me out to correct the code or suggest any other way to fix the issue Cross domain tracking code ======================= <script type="text/javascript">(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick300
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('require', 'linker');
ga('linker:autoLink', ['paypal.com', 'payments.epdq.co.uk'], false, true);
ga('create', 'UA-xxxxxx', 'auto', { 'allowLinker': true});
ga('require', 'displayfeatures');
ga('send', 'pageview');</script > I have hide the UID in above code. Thanks0 -
Implemented Enhance Ecommerce but Event tracking showing double
Hi, Today i have implemented Enhance Ecommerce with GTM everything working fine but in google analytic > Behavior > Events here all events figure i see double - triple so not getting exactly what is the issue. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Adwords in google analytic Transaction showing more than actual adwords
Hello Experts, Compared to my google adwords account , transaction showing more in adwords for google analytic. May i know where i am going wrong? Thanks! Dev
Reporting & Analytics | | devdan0 -
What are some good SERP visibility tools?
With keyword data from Google on its way out, we're losing our ability to discover what keywords a website is ranking for (you can do ranking checks, but only if you already know what keywords the site is ranking for). What are some good SERP visibility tools? (i.e. you enter the domain name, and the tool lists which keywords the site ranks for organically, etc.) I know SpyFu offers this, but they seem to be PPC focused and perhaps not very accurate. I know other companies offer it, but I'm blanking on which ones.
Reporting & Analytics | | AdamThompson0 -
Stats show /blog/wp-cron.php at the top. What is it?
Hi, I have worked with websites for years but have no clue when it comes to Wordpress. We have our main website and then a Wordpress blog running in a subfolder that is only about a year old. The blog has only 7 posts so you can see how small it is vs main website with 200 pages. Usually our main index page of the site is at the top of the stats with the most views and this page /blog/wp-cron.php is about 30% lower. Now suddenly over the last month this page has jumped to the top and accessed almost as much as the home page of the site. We took a big hit with the latest Google Update so we are tyring to determine if there is anything technical in our site that has caused an issue. Thanks in advance Force7
Reporting & Analytics | | Force70