How to deal with tracking numbers in URLs
-
I am working on a site at the minute that has links like this:
Jobs in London
URL looks like: domain.com/jobs-in-london/
However, my developers insist that they need to use tracking codes, so everytime someone clicks on the above link, they are redirected (301) to a new URL that looks like:
domain.com/search/1234567(unique search id)
This is killing me when I am trying to get internal pages, like /jobs-in-london/ ranked.
What to do?
-
I think Istvan is absolutely right. You need to canonicalize somehow - it could either be the canonical tag, or you could capture the tracking ID into a cookie and then 301-redirect to the canonical version.
This looks even worse than a typical tracking parameter situation, where it would just be tacked on at the end. It looks like the entire URL structure is changing. Honestly, any CMS that requires this is pretty outdated, IMO. As a former developer, I don't completely buy your developers' story. Doing it the right way may be a lot harder - it may not even be cost-effective - but it's far from impossible. If this structure is weird enough, the canonical or 301 could end up being band-aids.
-
Hey Miranda,
I would go for one of the following:
1. usage of canonicals (link rel canonical to domain.com/jobs-in-london/)
2. the dev team could use cookies to keep trackings (I am not a developer guy, but this issue has been solved many times with cookies) - Developers please correct me if I am wrong in this.
I hope it hepled,
Istvan
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
-
Having country in page url, good idea or bad idea?
Lets say i sell louisville hockey sticks if i have a page url as louisville-hockey-sticks-canada is this better than louisville-hockey-sticks I have a .CA domain
On-Page Optimization | | garmatinc0 -
Newbie SEO ?: Does my About page URL have to contain the word About?
New to WordPress and SEO. Built and launched my website last week. The URL was originally domain/about. However, I installed Yoast plugin and it told me "about" was a stop word. So, without too much thought (my first problem), I changed the url (before Google crawled me) to clearwingcommunications.com/storytelling. Since then, I've noticed that sites I know are optimized have their URL with the word "about." So, is this considered a bad practice? My site HAS been crawled at this point. If I change it back to About and do a 301 redirect, does that hurt reporting? Thanks for your help! Christy
On-Page Optimization | | christyr0 -
Duplicate URL's in Sitemap? Is that a problem?
I submitted a sitemap to on Search Console - but noticed that there are duplicate URLs, is that a problem for Google?
On-Page Optimization | | Luciana_BAH0 -
Should I be using the town or city in url with my keyword or keyphrase?
should I be using the town or city in url with my keyword or keyphrase? So lets say I'm trying to rank for butchers in home town should i put the town in the url as well so www.website.com/butchers-in-mytown is that bad? Or would it be best to just put www.website.com/butchers?
On-Page Optimization | | genkee0 -
Wordpress category url problem.
I have set up wordpress categories but the permalinks are showing as www.mydomain.com/?cat=12 as opposed to the category name. The child categories though work fine and show as www.mydomain.com/category/chidcatgegory I've obviously got my permalink settings wrong somewhere. How do I fix this?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Can we listed URL on Website sitemap page which are blocked by Robots.txt
Hi, I need your help here. I have a website, and few pages are created for country specific. (www.example.com/uk). I have blocked many country specific pages from Robots.txt file. It is advisable to listed those urls (blocked by robots.txt) on my website sitemap. (html sitemap page) I really appreciate your help. Thanks, Nilay
On-Page Optimization | | Internet-Marketing-Profs0 -
Trailing slash on URLs
Hi everyone My question is regarding trailing URLs in Wordpress A designer setup a site and made the URL structure something like: www.website.com/description/ but I want to change it to www.website.com/description as this is more SEF A trailing / was added to the permalink structure in Wordpress, if I change this will google see these as new URLs and will all the current URLs become 404? Or should I just leave it? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | webseoservices0 -
Re-write homepage url for non EMD for SEO
Hi, A lot of talk about EMD's lately not just here but all over SEO and affiliate forums. I've dabbled in emd's but have decided to go against the grain and use a non emd. I think I can optimise hard enough to rank and at the same time build a brand, which is where most emd's fail. But my question is this: If you are targeting lets say the term 'running trainers' and the domain is runyoursocksoff.com would it be more beneficial to rewrite the root domain to this: runyoursocksoff.com/running-trainers/ It does look messy to me and more then likely I would not use this but I have seen it a few times and was wondering if its a work around for non emd's.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0