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?

Hi, We seem to have a slightly odd issue. We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc. One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc. On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc. Thanks.

Hi Everyone. When implementing rel next and prev on pagination pages, should I make the pagination links themselves no followed? Have seen people saying yes and no so just want a final answer! Thanks

We're building a new website platform and are using Ajax as the method for allowing users to select from filters. We want to dynamically insert elements into the URL as the filters are selected so that search engines will index multiple combinations of filters. We're struggling to see how this is possible using symfony framework. We've used www.gizmodo.com as an example of how to achieve SEO and user-friendly URLs but this is only an example of achieving this for static content. We would prefer to go down a route that didn't involve hashbangs if possible. Does anyone have any experience using hashbangs and how it affected their site? Any advice on the above would be gratefully received.