Question on correctly using rel="canonical
-
OK I have a question for the community here. All links below are just used as examples and no relationship or real campaigns are being used with any websites named below.
Lets say that my domain is abc.com/whiskey/jack-daniels-whiskey/Gentleman-Jack/ but for Google Analytics tracking purposes I gave another website a tracking link for a banner that is as follows
Since the original URL to my site is http://abc.com/whiskey/jack-daniels-whiskey/Gentleman-Jack and Google will then spider the other site picking up my tracking link within the banner which also contains my original URL, can it cause issues with duplicate content and if so what is the best way to use rel="canonical in this case or would you handle this issue in a different way?
Thanks in advance for all your help.
-
Thank you Martijn. Much appreciate the quick response and answer to my questions.
Have a great day.
-
Hi DRZ,
If I get you right the main question here is: Are (campaign) tracking URLs causing duplicate content?
I would say No in the first place because Google invented the campaign tracking urls almost themselves for being able to tracking referral traffic to analyze within Google Analytics. So I would say they ignore the parameters in process of finding duplicate content. But there are 2 ways which are in my opinion the best to make sure this won't cause you any trouble without using a rel canonical.
Using a hash(#) instead of a question mark (?) for your tracking URLs: Using a hash will say ignore everything after the # to the Googlebot. So Google won't think this is duplicated. When using this solution make sure you'll also allow your tracking code to use the has.
Add your URL parameters in Google Webmaser Tools: By telling Google via Webmaster Tools that the campaign parameters don't change your content.
Hopefully these two options will help you any further.
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
-
UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
Hi, This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain... We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best. Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much. In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress). Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA? If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain. But if it is technically part of the powerful domain... Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog? I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in advance. J
Reporting & Analytics | | JabeKay0 -
Is the meta referrer tag still used
Is the meta meta referrer tag still used and is it affective. I have an issue with traffic going from one of my sites to a client site and our referral is going into their direct traffic (in Googel Analytics) instead of being seen as a referral from our site. I saw that people were using the meta referral tag, but I can't find any MOZ info about it other than a blog article from 2015.
Reporting & Analytics | | dpsoftware1 -
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 -
When I click on organic search, the biggest drop is on keyword "not provided". What does this mean?
I am trying to identify the reason for the drop in organic search.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
How to transfer 5 domains under one Brand domain without using 301 redirect with minimum SEO loss
My situation is rather complicated , I have 5 domains with different but identical services. Some with good traffic some without, but 2 main domains have manual penalty from Google (I have tried a lot to get rid of the penalty but no success) so finally I have decided to move all our websites under one anchor website 'a brand' and pass all the seo juice + blog articles under the same. Now the problem with the procedure is that we cannot redirect the penalized domain urls to new one as penalization will also be transferred and the whole motive of creating a new brand will be lost. So if somebody could guide me as of how I should proceed transferring SEO value with minimum traffic loss but without using 301) **One way I could figure out is using canonical (Am not confident over it) but say I create 5 identical pages on new domain and declare them as canonical of old domain pages (So is it safe? will it transfer the penalty of old domain to canonical new urls? ) ** Rest i am bifurcating all the traffic sources like direct / organic / referral / Social etc and chalking out what we can control manually and in what ratio, gradually I will work on each section to transfer the traffic. Main Problem is of Organic and Not available. Some suggestions or blog urls would be appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | ngupta10 -
Setting up Webmaster Tools correctly - naked domain DNS error and sub-domains question
I'm trying to get our domain (verdantly.com) set up correctly in Google Webmaster Tools. Currently, I have three "sites" setup: blog.verdantly.com (wordpress.com blog redirected to this subdomain) www.verdantly.com verdantly.com The subdomain blog and www show up without errors. However, the naked domain shows a DNS error. I've checked the DNS settings at the registrar and don't see any issues. So here are my questions: 1. Am I correct in setting up the naked domain AND the subdomains separately in Webmaster tools? 2. How do I track down / resolve the source of the DNS errors at the naked domain? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | letsdothis0 -
Does Google Analytics use your data against you?
I couldn't find this question answered anywhere in Q&A, so I apologize if it's a duplicate of another post. I heard, about a year ago on either Web Pro World, or Warrior Forum that Google uses your visitor data in your Google Analytic account to rank your site. Someone said that when they took out the Google code, their site went from the third to the first page within 48 hours. That was then verified over the next couple of weeks by others. Their thought was that regardless of the optimized page and incoming link, if the site wasn't getting visitors, then it would be penalized. Since Google has the data, they would be able to use it. I then started using another, paid, solution - getclicky.com. While I like clicky, there is some info Google has that clicky doesn't, everyone integrates with Google analytics - like SEOmoz, and I'm paying a monthly fee. Now that I'm a part of a community of experts, what do you think? Have you noticed Google ranking you based on your analytics data? Has anyone experienced this, or heard about it before? Because I'd like to go back to using Google analytics. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | DallasBonsai0 -
Use SEOmoz API in Google Docs Spreadsheet
Hi, Has anyone made functions to get link metrics from SEOmoz API in Google docs spreadsheet? Page Authority Domain Authority Linking Root Domains Total Links _Thanks to Tom Critchlow I got the social metrics, now I just need the ones from SEOmoz api. _ Any help would be sweet.
Reporting & Analytics | | EdgySEO0