Adding a Query String to a Static URL is that good or bad?
-
I just went through this huge process to shorten my URL structure and remove all dynamic strings. Now my analytics team wants to add query strings to track clicks from the homepage. Is this going to destroy my clean url structure by appending a query string to the end of the URL structure.
-
Call me Tom.
I'm happy to be of help!
-
Thanks Thomas from Blueprint Marketing,
That answer was excellent, I was just using the capitalization as an example. I am only using lower case on our URL's. I hope with my cannon issue any page that has a CID in the URL gets pointed back to the version without.
-
Hi,
your example of a canonical tag is an example of what you do not want to do.
_ This is the example I'm referencing_
www.pageA.com/?CID=1324 with a canonical tag pointing to: www.pageA.com/?CID=1324)
There are two issues I want to point out.
you do not want to create a canonical tag for a CID URL meaning the URL www.pageA.com can have a canonical ( this example is if you want to keep a capital letter in your URL)
www.pageA.com/?CID=1324 would have a canonical of nevermind ?CID=1234 that is why the canonical matters to keep Google from mistaking www.pageA.com/?CID=1324 with if you intended to have a capital letter www.pageA.com
Using a capital letter unless you have very good reason do not put cap's in your URLs Linux based servers servers e.g. Google bot consider a URL with a capital letter different from the same URL all lowercase.
So www.pageA.com UNLESS you intended to keep a capital letter in the URL would look like this
If you had you intended to keep the capital letter
To simplify this is much as I can. The ideal canonical tag for www.pagea.com/?CID=132 would be
as long as the ?CID=1234 is not in the canonical URL check out
http://moz.com/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
I have a Canonical tagging situation on my website. With every page created a caon tag is automatically placed on the page pointing to itself (example: Page A pointing to Page A)
So my concern is that placing an analytic query string to my page is going to have a canon tag pointing to itself (example: www.pageA.com/?CID=1324 with a canonical tag pointing to: www.pageA.com/?CID=1324)
-
Yup as Thomas says above adding any tags to the end of a full static URL will have no effect on the clean URL structure as long as you set your canonicals correctly.
If the URL is http://website.com/page/?CID=1234, the canonical should be http://website.com/page/
-
UTM query is ok
make sure you have the correct non UTM URL tagged with a canonical
Tom
-
CID= is a campaign code for Omniture I believe, but you use it for tagging external campaigns that link back to your site. You should find out more as to why your team wants to do this.
If you have canonical tags on each page to themselves the query string should not effect your SEO (they shouldn't anyways, but it is safest to do it).
-
I currently do have all my pages canon tagged to themselves my developers set it up in a way that is complicated to make "Page A" Canonical to "Page B" and i'm working on that change.
The analytic team is wanting to play a CID= into the URL structure and i'm scared that it will cause duplicate urls
-
You may want to speak with your team as to why they want to add query strings, your analytics program should not need internal links to have query strings added, and if you are using Google Analytics adding their UTM query strings to internal links will cause major errors with your data.
If they do have legitimate reasons to query tag internal links, just make sure that you have all of your pages canonical tagged to themselves and then you won't have to worry about it messing up your URL structure.
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
-
URL structure for a product that belongs to several categories
Hi, We are setting up the URL structure for a big webshop and this raised the following questions regarding the URL's for products that belong to several categories (most of the products do, so the same approach would be used for products that just belong to one category). There are three options in my point of view: Use root-level product page URLs (limits trackability in Analytics software because you can not specify on product types)
Reporting & Analytics | | Mat_C
URL: example.com/product-1/ Use product type URL directories for all products (which at least offers minimum trackability of all separate product types in Analytics software)
URL: example.com/book/product-1/ Use product URLs built upon category URL structures, but ensure that each product page URL has a single, designated canonical URL.
URL: example.com/category-A/product-1/ with canonical= example.com/category-A/product-1/ URL: example.com/category-B/product-1/ with canonical= example.com/category-A/product-1/ Which option is the preferred one? Thanks!0 -
Multiple Pages get rank for one query
Hi to all experts, In google search console , I've found that multiple pages get rank for my main query. How can I solve that? aoi59
Reporting & Analytics | | tarahshiiid0 -
Google Analytics Question - Impressions & Queries Up, Sessions Down
I'm working with a client who, according to the Google Query report, impressions and sessions are up since we've started work with them about 6 months ago, but Google sessions are down. In moz, we're seeing a gradual, but steady increase in search visibility specifically with Google. Note: this is all organic. From when we started tracking queries, the first month we were tracking there were 43,581 impressions and 690 click throughs for the month. This past month there were 98,293 queries and 1015 clicks throughs for the month (granted not year over year data) - of these 1,015 clicks, 995 of them were from web. However, for those same time periods, sessions from Google are down over 30% - 1,750 vs. 1,189. I'm not sure how to interpret this. I realize that clicks and sessions are not a straightforward comparison, but I would think that if clicks were up according to the query report that sessions would also be up. Is it that some of these clicks are bouncing and therefore not being tracked as a session? Is there a potential issue with how data is being tracked?
Reporting & Analytics | | Corporate_Communications0 -
Www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion_async.js what is this url doing on my site?
Hello Guys, I am using google tagmanager and i have configured adwords in tag manager now what i find is that this link - www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion_async.js showing on my homepage not in view source but when i do inspect element at that time it appears. So do you think after using google tag manager still i need to use the given link? Thanks, Raghu
Reporting & Analytics | | raghuvinder0 -
What is this GA URL I keep seeing?
According to google analytics, most of my traffic goes to two URLs: "/site/kempruge" and "/" now, I'm pretty sure both of these are taking people to my homepage, but I do not understand the "/site/kempruge' one at all. When I type www.kempruge.com/site/kemprure it 404's, so I'm not sure what URL it even is? Also, I'm wondering if this url is hurting my website in some way? I attached the screenshots, but they didn't load properly. I'll try to add another one in the replies. Thanks! Ruben [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a>
Reporting & Analytics | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Google Analytics - Next Page Path is the Same URL?
Hey Everyone, I have a Google analytics question. I'm looking through a client's site and when I look at the next page path, I get the same URL as the next path. For example, on the homepage, the next page path I get is the homepage again? This happens for all URL's, is this an implementation error? Is there a way to fix this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt0 -
No Link Data Available for this URL appears often. Are my sites too small to show up?
I am on the trial until Mar 5, 2012. I seldom get the info I want. Is it because my sites are too narrow a niche? I don't seem to be getting the data I'd like from your service. I'm trying to like it, but when I keep getting messages like this, it makes it hard to justify: "No Link Data Available for this URL appears often" Sample sites that I am unable to get data. I especially would like to know how many backlinks exist for each site. I paid someone to help me with them and I'd like to verify their work.: http://costaricadentistreview.com/ http://costaricadentistreviews.com/ http://costaricadentalimplants.org Any suggestions? Thanx Kurt Gross
Reporting & Analytics | | kurtray0 -
Adding Something to htaccess File
When I did a google search for site.kisswedding.com (my website) I noticed that google is indexing all of the https versions of my site. First of all, I don't get it because I don't have an SSL certificate. Then, last night I did what my host (bluehost) told me to do. I added the below to my htaccess file. Below rule because google is indexing https version of site - https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/758RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^kisswedding.com$ [OR]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^kisswedding.com$RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.kisswedding.com [R=301,L] Tonight I when I did a google search for site:kisswedding.com all of those https pages were being redirected to my home page - not the actually page they're supposed to be redirecting to. I went back to Bluehost and they said and 301 redirect shouldn't work because I don't have an SSL certificate. BUT, I figure since it's sorta working I just need to add something to that htaccess rule to make sure it's redirected to the right page. Someone in the google webmaster tools forums told me to do below but I don't really get it? _"to 301 redirect from /~kisswedd/ to the proper root folder you can put this in the root folder .htaccess file as well:_Redirect 301 /~kisswedd/ http://www.kisswedding.com/" Any help/advice would be HUGELY appreciated. I'm a bit at a loss.
Reporting & Analytics | | annasus0