Do custom tracking codes affect indexing?

[CalebWardSoM]

Hello,

My company uses a tracking system that allows our employees to apply a short code snippet to the end of our URLs for marketing attribution. An example of such a code would be: https://www.schoolofmotion.com/?ref_id=moz-test

However, in Google Analytics we are seeing duplicates of our content, where the pages with the individual tracking codes are counted separately from the pages without. From a reporting perspective, this is annoying and definitely worth a fix. However, I'm curious if this problem is affecting our search potential as well. Could this tracking system be splitting traffic in Google's eyes?

From an SEO perspective, how should we approach this? Would canonical tags fix this duplication issue in Google Analytics? Is there something else that we should use?

Thanks in advance. The Moz community is incredible.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Glad I could be of help Caleb! & Thank you Dr Peat!

like Dr Peat said it’s tricky when filtering google analytics

Do you know everything  you don’t want to have google show you?

Because I’m on my cell phone I have posted some links with examples you will want to do the same thing in search console/webmaster tools

Remove Query String from URLs In Google Analytics  like Dr. Pete said  need to create a new view in analytics

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009714?hl=en

1. Click Admin, and navigate to the account and property to which you want to add the view.
2. In the VIEW column, click the menu, then click Create a new view.
3. Select Web Site
4. Add website
5. given a name like filtered

Google created a spreadsheet to automate the process.

Make a copy of this sheet and follow the instructions (clearly laid out on the first tab of the spreadsheet),

you'll be left with a list of all query parameters found in your data from the past N days. When leveraging the spreadsheet, it’s optimal to use a view without any filters on it.

CITE:

https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/clean-up-query-parameters-google-analytics/

Open Google sheets and make a copy of the "Google Analytics Exclude URL Query Parameters Worksheet"

here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10Avx25Lp_vOTtjX5ZBxYijDvDr-GabfhGt42isA8Zn0/edit#gid=1264704716

https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2015/04/17/strip-query-parameters-google-analytics

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1010249?hl=en

you can also utilize Google's API for bigger sites https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/query-explorer/?csw=1

if you are a regex person this is  helpful https://www.lunametrics.com/regex-book/

I hope this helps,

Tom

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[CalebWardSoM]

We'll definitely look into getting Canonical tags on the site. Thank you very much for the thoughtful response and examples.

Cheers!

[BlueprintMarketing]

I apologize for the brief reply I have rewritten this three times and somehow closed my page. Anyway, the important part is this is your issue you are not implementing canonical tags

see this image full-size you have no canonical's

• https://i.imgur.com/9wANDuK.png
• https://i.imgur.com/aflhpsU.jpg
• https://i.imgur.com/jC30gwx.jpg

To specify which URL that you want people to see in search results. You might prefer people reach your home page via https://www.schoolofmotion.com rather than. https://www.schoolofmotion.com/?ref_id=moz-test

Cite: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

You are missing a canonical on your homepage and other pages as well this will lead to duplicate content when you post things like

https://www.schoolofmotion.com/?ref_id=moz-test

in order to prevent this query string from becoming a duplicate, you need a self-referencing canonical or a canonical reference from the query string to the correct URL https://www.schoolofmotion.com/?ref_id=moz-test

I've given you 5 URLs to reference and become more familiar with the subject

1. https://mza.bundledseo.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
2. https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/rel-canonical
3. https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
4. https://yoast.com/duplicate-content/#url-parameter
5. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

**Reverse proxies allow you to set your headers this can be a very efficient way of adding a lot of canonical's if you're using  a CMS like Drupal, Magento or WordPress I recommend **

Yoast WordPress SEO,  Yoast Drupal SEO  & Yoast Magento SEO

The reverse proxies are below

• https://www.fastly.com/blog/normalizing-host-header

• https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seos

• https://www.cloudflare.com/features-page-rules/must-use-page-rules/

• https://www.distilled.net/resources/new-distilled-odn-features-including-seo-friendly-urls-for-enterprise-platforms/

• https://wordpresscheat.com/fixing-cloudflare-wordpress-duplicate-content/

( I somehow closed my page 3 times while writing this message so I apologize if it is brief)

please let me know if there's any way I can be of assistance

Tom

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