Tracking links and duplicate content

[Rydch41]

Hi all,

I have a bit of a conundrum for you all pertaining to a tracking link issue I have run into on a clients site. They currently have over duplicate content. Currently, they have over 15,000 pages being crawled (using Screaming Frog) but only 7,000+ are legitimate pages in the sense of they are not duplicates of themselves.

The client is using Omniture instead of Google Analytics and using an advanced tracking system on their site for internal and external links (ictids and ectids) in the URL parameters. This is creating thousands of duplicated pages being crawled by Google (as seen on their Search Console and on Screaming Frog).

They also are in the middle of moving over from http to https and have thousands of pages currently set up for both, again, creating a duplicate content issue.

What I have suggested for the tracking links is setting up a URL parameter in Search Console for these tracking links. I've also suggested they canonical all tracking links to point to the clean page so the pages that have already been indexed point to the correct clean url. Does this seam like the appropriate strategy?

Additionally, I've told them before they submit a new sitemap to Google, they need to switch their website over to https to avoid worsening their duplicate content issue. They have not submitted a sitemap to Google Search Console since March 2015.

Thank you for any help you can offer!

[KristinaKledzik]

Personally, I would submit a clean sitemap ASAP. It's helpful whenever you upload it, and SEO fixes are best made as soon as possible, otherwise you're just leaving traffic on the table.

Plus, I'm skeptical that a move to https will be fast.

That said, there's no reason why you can't move your site to https without already having a clean XML sitemap for the http version. So it's really up to you.

Sorry, that's a little ambiguous! Such is SEO.

Good luck!

Kristina

[Rydch41]

Hey Kristina,

Thanks for the reply! Yes, I have already gone ahead and changed their URL parameters accordingly. I've asked their developer to go through and canonical all tracking link URLs to the clean URL.

The sitemap is a more complicated issue as they haven't had one created in a little more than a year, so it is very out of date. We are working with them to get a clean version of their sitemap in place after we restructure some of their navigation and content.

Do you think there is value in submitting a clean sitemap (without the tracking links) before switching over to https or just wait until after that change is made?

Thanks again for the reply. This is one of the most complicated sites I've ever tackled. Glad to hear I am on the right track!

[KristinaKledzik]

Hey there,

I think you've given your client some good advice. Just to make sure we're all on the same page about how to handle duplicate content created by tracking parameters:

• Make sure to keep the XML sitemap up to date, and only include the canonical versions of URLs
• Canonical all parameter-ed URLs back to a single source, without parameters
• Mark those tracking parameters as "Doesn't affect page content (tracks usage)" in Google Search Console

The parameter issue is something I would fix ASAP, then tackle https when that comes around. At that point, you'll need to make sure ALL http pages 301 redirect to https versions of the page. I haven't worked with Omniture much, but make sure that doesn't break tracking.

Good luck!

Kristina