Analytics year to year comparisons when Url extensions change?
-
We manage a website which we recently changed from Drupal to Word Press. In the change, we dropped a small part of the previous URLs - the end extension - .php For example /attractions-rates.php is now
/attractions-rates with no .php. We eliminated the .php to make the URL simpler.How is it possible (and easiest) to do a year to year comparison as Google sees the pages as different? They didn't for the first 8 days (we could see both) but now the pages with the .php extension shows zeros.
The content of the page is exactly the same only the .php is different. We know we can manually go back to last year's reports and do side by side but that is time consuming. Hoping there is a filter or process we can use to gen a report? Thanks, Jim
-
Hello Jim,
I understand that comparing these two data sets can be rather frustrating, especially when you're trying to do quick comparisons across multiple data sets.
Unfortunately, there is no way to retroactively filter this data within the Google Analytics reports. But you can create a filter to handle this issue moving forward.
To do this, go to the specific view that you wish to change this data in, select the 'Filters' option and then select 'Create new Filter'. Then after naming it as you please, choose 'Custom' as your Filter Type and then select the 'Search and Replace' radial option. Under the Filter Field drop-down, select 'Request URI' and in your Search String enter '.php$' and leave the Replace String section empty. (This is a regular expression; therefore, the beginning \ escapes the '.' variable & the '$' defines that this should only happen when the string ends in '.php')
Then at the bottom of the page you should see an option to verify this filter. Do so and ensure the change being made makes your desired effect. Be sure to check that no anomalies are created through this process.Now that you have created a filter to handle this issue moving forward, the best way to handle this is to manually export the data and sort the URLs by alphabetical order, unless you are fluent in using the Google Analytics API. Then you could use the API to pull this data into Google Sheets & have it automatically clean up the data, but I would not recommend this solution if you haven't previously used the Analytics API.
While I know this is not an ideal solution, this should handle the issue moving forward.
Let me know if you have any further questions!
Regards,
Trenton
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
-
Website Redesign - What to do with old 301 URLs?
My current site is on wordpress. We are currently designing a new wordpress site, with the same URLs. Our current approach is to go into the server, delete the current website files and ad the new website files. My current site has old urls which are 301 redirected to current urls. Here is my question. In the current redesign process, do i need to create pages for old the 301 redirected urls so that we do not lose them in the launch of the new site? or is the 301 command currently existing outside of our server so this does not matter? Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | CamiloSC0 -
301 Redirect Issue for URL with # and !
Hi All, We had a WIX website and now moved to Wordpress. I m having issue while doing redirecting from old URL to new URL. Example: Old Url: http://www.firsttraffic.com.au/#!traffic-management/ccfn New Url: http://www.firsttraffic.com.au/our-services/traffic-management/ I tried different wordpress plugin but nothing works. I m thinking its due to the # . But How can I to redirection for URL like this . Thanks
Web Design | | emarketexperts0 -
Changing Page Extenstions
Hi all, I have a 10 year old website done in Classic ASP, which is fast becoming outdated and we are going to convert it to PHP so all of our pages would be changed from a '/page.asp' extension to a '/page.php' extension. I am familiar with the need to setup 301 redirects for this and I understand there will probably be a short term drop in our Google rankings. Naturally, I don't want to have to go through this again in the future so here is my question. Is having NO page extension, like '/aboutus/history' the wave of the future? Does having no page extension effect SEO at all? I have seen more websites using this technique in 2013 goes on so I am thinking this is the way we should plan our site update. I haven't looked into how to actually do this yet, but it would seem to make sense to me so that if we needed to change from PHP to say .NET or something else later on, we would not have to do 301 redirects again or have another drop in our rankings. Do any of you have an opinion or experience with this?
Web Design | | jacksghost0 -
Are URL suffixes ignored by Google? Or is this duplicate content?
Example URLs: www.example.com/great-article-on-dog-hygiene.html www.example.com/great-article-on-dog-hygiene.rt-article.html My IT dept. tells me the second instance of this article would be ignored by Google, but I've found a couple of instances in which Google did index the 'rt-article.html' version of the page. To be fair, I've only found a couple out of MANY. Is it an issue? Thanks, Trisha
Web Design | | lzhao0 -
Need help in website URL Structure
I have been working on a brand new website currently it is live but I have disallow Googlebots temporarily as I dint want any negative impact. The business of the site is to generate leads , they install and sell Stairlifts and used Stairlifts. There are two main categories New Stairlifts and Reconditioned Stairlifts Currently the URL for new Stairlifts is : http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/stairlifts/ and for Reconditioned Stairlifts is: http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned-stairlifts/ My concerns are that the word Stairlifts is mentioned twice in the urls so is it going to have a negative impact or panda penalty? I am thinking of changing them to http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/new/ and the product pages to display as http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/new/brooks/ Currently its http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/stairlifts/brooks/ Same with reconditioned Stairlifts I like to change it to : http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned Also its product pages to http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned/brooks/ As currently its http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned-stairlifts/brooks/ Thanks
Web Design | | conversiontactics0 -
Is it too late to change an IP from the linking c-block?
My main web development company is linked to many of our clients and our clients link back to us using footer links back. We obviously have a high volume of c-block relations. If I change my main site's location to a different server will it make any difference or is it too late?
Web Design | | sanchez19600 -
Template change, huge drop in rankings
We recently changed the template of our website but we kept the same url structure, most titles are the same, the content changed a little bit, the description is the same, and the same on-page SEO. Although we have been very careful and the actual template change took less than 5 minutes, we experienced a huge drop in rankings (even more than 10 positions in Google serp). Does anyone have any idea what could have caused such a drop? The weird thing is that Google still has the old website in cash and not the new one. We resubmitted the sitemap, made a few more redirects... but anyway... what else can we do? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Web Design | | echo10 -
Has Anyone Had Issues With ASP.NET 4.0 URL Routing?
I'm seeing some odd results in my SEOMOZ results with a new site I just released that is using the ASP.NET 4.0 URL routing. I am seeing thousands(!) of duplicate results, for instance, because the crawl has uncovered something like this: http://www.mysite.com/
Web Design | | TroyCarlson
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx (so far, so good, though I wish it wouldn't show both)
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx/about/ (what the heck -?)
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx/about/about/ (WTF!?)
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx/about/about/products/ (and on and on ad infinitum) I'm also seeing problems pop up in my sitemap because extensionless urls have an odd "eurl.axd/abunchofnumbersgohere" appended to the end of every address which is breaking links. sigh Buyer beware. I've found articles that discuss the "eurl.axd" issue here and there (this one seems very good), but nothing about the weird crawl issue I outlined above. Any advice?0