URL Parameter Being Improperly Crawled & Indexed by Google
-
Hi All,
We just discovered that Google is indexing a subset of our URL’s embedded with our analytics tracking parameter. For the search “dresses” we are appearing in position 11 (page 2, rank 1) with the following URL:
www.anthropologie.com/anthro/category/dresses/clothes-dresses.jsp?cm_mmc=Email--Anthro_12--070612_Dress_Anthro-_-shop
You’ll note that “cm_mmc=Email” is appended. This is causing our analytics (CoreMetrics) to mis-attribute this traffic and revenue to Email vs. SEO.
A few questions:
1) Why is this happening? This is an email from June 2012 and we don’t have an email specific landing page embedded with this parameter. Somehow Google found and indexed this page with these tracking parameters. Has anyone else seen something similar happening?
2) What is the recommended method of “politely” telling Google to index the version without the tracking parameters? Some thoughts on this:
a. Implement a self-referencing canonical on the page.
- This is done, but we have some technical issues with the canonical due to our ecommerce platform (ATG). Even though page source code looks correct, Googlebot is seeing the canonical with a JSession ID.
b. Resubmit both URL’s in WMT Fetch feature hoping that Google recognizes the canonical.
- We did this, but given the canonical issue it won’t be effective until we can fix it.
c. URL handling change in WMT
- We made this change, but it didn’t seem to fix the problem
d. 301 or No Index the version with the email tracking parameters
- This seems drastic and I’m concerned that we’d lose ranking on this very strategic keywordThoughts?
Thanks in advance,
Kevin
-
Hey jStrong,
Thanks for your response.
I was thinking along the same lines, but I'm TERRIFIED of losing rank for this keyword. Technically, you're correct. However, what Google actually does can sometimes be questionable.
I think we'll test this out on one of our lower volume and less strategic keywords and see how Google reacts.
I'll respond to this thread once we get results back.
Thanks again!
Kevin
-
Hi Kevin,
I have seen URLs get picked up sometimes by google that are seemingly nowhere to be found. In this case I would setup the 301 redirect. The page being redirected to has the canonical so that tells google this is the correct page to index. The 301 also tells google that the current page being indexed is no longer valid and that it should update the SERP to display the correct page instead. There may be a chance you lose some ranking, but if the content is the same, I would think this is minimal as is stated in this Moz article about redirects and you could probably regain any lost ranking relatively quickly.
Hope this helps.
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
-
What to do with parameter urls?
We have a ton of ugly parameter urls that are coming up in google, in semrush, etc. What do we do with them? I know they can cause issues. EX https://www.hibbshomes.com/wp-content/themes/highstand/assets/js/cubeportfolio/js/jquery.cubeportfolio.min.js?ver=6.3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stldanni0 -
Robots.txt, Disallow & Indexed-Pages..
Hi guys, hope you're well. I have a problem with my new website. I have 3 pages with the same content: http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1 (good page) http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=false http://example.examples.com/brand/brand1?show=true The good page has rel=canonical & it is the only page should be appear in Search results but Google has indexed 3 pages... I don't know how should do now, but, i am thinking 2 posibilites: Remove filters (true, false) and leave only the good page and show 404 page for others pages. Update robots.txt with disallow for these parameters & remove those URL's manually Thank you so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Pages getting into Google Index, blocked by Robots.txt??
Hi all, So yesterday we set up to Remove URL's that got into the Google index that were not supposed to be there, due to faceted navigation... We searched for the URL's by using this in Google Search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:price=
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:artists= So it brings up a list of "duplicate" pages, and they have the usual: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." So we removed them all, and google removed them all, every single one. This morning I do a check, and I find that more are creeping in - If i take one of the suspecting dupes to the Robots.txt tester, Google tells me it's Blocked. - and yet it's appearing in their index?? I'm confused as to why a path that is blocked is able to get into the index?? I'm thinking of lifting the Robots block so that Google can see that these pages also have a Meta NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag on - but surely that will waste my crawl budget on unnecessary pages? Any ideas? thanks.0 -
Advance SEO: Values accepted in google parameters
Hello Mozzers, What values are accepted in parameter field in webmaster? I want to block URL's with + in them. Parameters does not seem to accept + as a valid value Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Requesting New Custom URL for Google+ Local Business Page
This question is about the new custom URLs for Google+ Local Business pages: Has anyone heard any success stories with requesting a custom URL different than the two reserved ones offered by Google via contacting a Google Rep by phone? And what advantages might there be for a local business to go with a very long custom URL such asgoogle.com/+rosenbergAndDalgrenLLPFortLauderdale as opposed to just google.com/+RdLawyers? Does having the city name in the URL offer any <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> benefit? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gbkevin0 -
Sudden increase in number of indexed URLs. How ca I know what URLs these are?
We saw a spike in the total number of indexed URLs (17,000 to 165,000)--what would be the most efficient way to find out what the newly indexed URLs are?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Google Maps results doesn't show my site url but rather the maps url, why is this?
For several of my clients landing pages that show up in the Maps results the website url has been overwritten by the maps url (maps.google.com). Even though on my places page I have the correct website set up. Does anyone have any idea why they would be doing this and how I can correct it? Thanks kinldy in advance, Aaron. maps-url.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afranklin0