Duplicate content? Split URLs? I don't know what to call this but it's seriously messing up my Google Analytics reports
-
Hi Friends,
This issue is crimping my analytics efforts and I really need some help. I just don't trust the analytics data at this point. I don't know if my problem should be called duplicate content or what, but the SEOmoz crawler shows the following URLS (below) on my nonprofit's website. These are all versions of our main landing pages, and all google analytics data is getting split between them. For instance, I'll get stats for the /camp page and different stats for the /camp/ page. In order to make my report I need to consolidate the 2 sets of stats and re-do all the calculations. My CMS is looking into the issue and has supposedly set up redirects to the pages w/out the trailing slash, but they said that setting up the "ref canonical" is not relevant to our situation.
If anyone has insights or suggestions I would be grateful to hear them. I'm at my wit's end (and it was a short journey from my wit's beginning ...)
Thanks.
URL
-
Zsolt is correct.if you have a 301 redirecet to the slash, you must also have your internal links point at the slash, or visa versa if you 301 to non slash your internal links should do the same,
This is a common problem i find in WordPress sites.
Why this is important is each redirecet leaks a bit of link juice, site wide this adds up to a lot.
Your site has many html errors, another thing common to CMS.
unclosed tags can confuse a bot as to what is visible to the user
-
Hello Dave!
As I see the redirection is in place and www.enf.org/camp redirects to www.enf.org/camp/ and so on with the othe urls: all of them redirects to the one ending with /. I think you should simply neglect the ones tat do not end this way as anyone opening them would end up on the www.enf.org/camp/ type, but that is not rue the other way. So if I type www.enf.org/camp/ will never see www.enf.org/camp.
Consequence: if you examine only www.enf.org/camp/ you get the number of people visiting www.enf.org/camp/ and www.enf.org/camp as well. This is true woith all the other ones. It is enough to examine the one the users are redirected to.
-
Hi Dave,
In short, you are suffering from issues related to URL standardization. First let me share a few URL facts which you may or may not be aware of:
http://www.enf.org and http://enf.org are two different URLs
www.enf.org/oases and www.enf.org/oases/ are two different URLs
www.enf.org/Garden and www.enf.org/garden are two different URLs
In each case you may choose to show the identical content on each version of the URL, but they are in fact two distinct web addresses. You could choose to offer completely different content on each URL. This issue causes many SEO problems. The issue can and should be fixed.
The solution is to implement a couple generic regex expressions for your site. The actual solution varies depending upon the technology used for your site.
Step 1 - Decide upon how you want your URLs to appear. Do you prefer a trailing slash? or no? Which method you use isn't as important as picking one solution and sticking with it. For capitalization, it is strongly recommended to always use lower case letters.
Step 2 - Ask your web host or developer to make the following site wide changes:
Remove the trailing slash from all URLs (or add a slash, depending upon your preferred choice)
Force all URLs to lowercase letters
Step 3 - Test the solution. Try accessing the alternate versions of URLs such as the ones you shared in the list above. Each web page should only be accessible via a single URL. All of the other versions should redirect to the preferred format.
Once the solution is implemented, expect it to take about a month for all the changes to be captured by Google, then examine your reports again. They should appear much cleaner.
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
-
Impressions skyrocketed 10x in few days on just one keyword and I don't understand why.
Hi everyone, I found this 'anomaly' in my google search console data. As you can see from the picture the impressions skyrocketed in a few days and then sort-of plateaued. The clicks remained almost the same because the keyword is highly informational (Wikipedia takes all the traffic). The keyword has around 650 000 searches per month. Btw. We are not doing off-site SEO. I would like to hear your opinion on what could have caused this. A Google update maybe? 5lERKef
Reporting & Analytics | | filip-balun1 -
Does Google need Analytics installed to create metrics?
Hi Mozers, Does Google know time on site, number of page visits, bounce rate, etc. even if Google Analytics is NOT installed? Does it measure all that stuff anyway, and if you install the GA code on your site, that is so that YOU can see those metrics? OR can Google only see those metrics if you install GA on your site? Thanks! Jane
Reporting & Analytics | | CalamityJane771 -
Google Analytics & Google Sheets
Hi guys, I'm looking to use google analytics google sheets extension to pull data into a google sheet with metrics from other tools e.g. semrush, moz, etc. From my understanding with google analytics google sheet extension its designed to run reports and doesn't really allow you to add other metrics. Basically what i'm trying to do is this: https://www.useloom.com/share/c1e42bfa60bd46fca2b1120018969ce8 Any suggestions/advice on how to do this would be great. Cheers.
Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright0 -
Analytics Data Messed Up
I have a website that gives very unatural data in Analytics. First for some reason my paid search traffic and organic traffic seems to be pretty much the same. If I pause my adwords ads my organic traffic go down if I start them it goes up. Anyone else had this problem before?
Reporting & Analytics | | AngelosS0 -
How drop off works in google analytic for enhance ecommerce?
Hello Guys, I have implemented enhance ecommerce ( i.e. - https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/enhanced-ecommerce ) Now i have query how drops off actually works? Like i visited the my site, then product page then checkout step 1 page after that i close the checkout step 1 page that means checkout step 1 drop off will appear in google analytic? right? John
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Analytics - 'other'
When i look in GA under Channels (under Acquisition) 'other' is listed What is 'other' ? I have been told its other unidentified channels as they did not allow 3rd party cookies or surfers were in anonymous/private mode. Other is usually organic traffic that couldn't be identified for the aformentioned reasons. This data is encrypted and available but it violates Google guidelines as they are not allowed to pass personal info//data to third parties so it is automatically filtered. But they are not 'Not Provided' (since that still shows under organic) but is usually/mainly some form of organic visits. Hence Seo can take credit for much of that traffic, is this correct ? Many Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Does Google encryption of keyword data impact SEO revenue reporting in Google analytics?
Hi there, I know Google has been encrypting SEO keyword data which they rolled out in September 2013. My question is - will this impact SEO revenue figures reported in Google analytics? I have been monitoring SEO revenue figures for a client and they are significantly down even though rankings have not lowered. Is this because of Google's encryption? Could there be another reason? Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | CayenneRed890 -
Google Analytics
Hello In Google analytics you can obtain the number of visits as a result of non-paid search. You can also set up custom reports to find the number of organic searches. The numbers are different, so what is the obvious difference between these two metrics that I'm missing. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0