Page Tracking using Custom URLs - is this viable?
-
Hi Moz community!
I’ll try to make this question as easy to understand as possible, but please excuse me if it isn’t clear.
Just joined a new team a few months ago and found out that on some of our most popular pages we use “custom URLs” to track page metrics within Google Analytics. NOTE: I say “custom URLs” because that is the best way for me to describe them.
As an example:
-
This page exists to our users: http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Ram_HD/2012/photos-interior/
-
But this is the URL we have coded on the page: cars-trucks/used-cars/reviews/2012-Ram-HD/photos-interior/ (within the custom variance script labeled as “var l_tracker=” )
-
It is this custom URL that we use within GA to look up metrics about this page.
-
This is just one example of many across our site setup to do the same thing
-
Here is a second example:
- Available page to user: http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/Cadillac_ATS/2015/
- Custom “var l_tracker=” /cars-trucks/2015-Cadillac-ATS/overview/
- NOTE: There is a small amount of fear that the above method was implemented years ago as a work-around to a poorly structured URL architecture. Not validated, but that is a question that arose.
Main Questions:
- Is the above implementation a normal and often used method to track pages in GA? (coming from an Omniture company before – this would not be how we handled page level tracking)
- Team members at my current company are divided on this method. Some believe this is not a proper implementation and are concerned that trying to hide these from Google will raise red flags (i.e. fake URLs in general = bad)
- I cannot find any reference to this method anywhere on the InterWebs
- If method is not normal: Any recommendations on a solution to address this?
Potential Problems?
- GA is currently cataloguing these tracking URLs in the Crawl Error report. Any concerns about this?
- The team wants to hide the URLs in the Robots.txt file, but some team members are concerned this may raise a red flag with Google and hurt us more than help us.
Thank you in advance for any insight and/or advice.
Chris
-
-
any help?
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
-
GA Landing Page Inaccuracies
I had seen a thread on this a while back but no solution posted. There was a link posted to someone else explaining the issue but I got a 404 when clicking. Have a client that does mostly PPC and they are getting their conversion page showing up as landing page from paid many times. This is definitely not a sitelink, etc. The only way you get to this page is if you filled out the form. There are a few other pages showing up as landing pages that don't make sense too. Can this be attributed to someone being "inactive" for 30 minutes and then coming back and performing an action on this page (leaving)? If so, does this double count the conversion if a page visit here is a conversion? Just trying to make sense of the landing page report showing so many instances of our conversion page. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | jeremyskillings0 -
How can I make sure that we are only tracking for single URLs?
Is there a way to track in Google analytics where part of the URL is excluded. For example, we need to track when customers complete an application form, however whenever a new form is completed a new URL is created. This makes it difficult to track pages in GA as there are so many URLs.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
How many ways to use Event in Google Tag Manager for Event Tracking?
Hello Experts, How many ways to use Event in Google Tag Manager for Event Tracking? As per me there are 5 ways given below are they correct? 2nd thing if yes can you please please tell me procedure of using all or which is the best one to use? HTML 5 Data Attributes Classic Google Analytics Example: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/downloads/pdfs/corporateBrief.pdf']);
Reporting & Analytics | | bkmitesh
3) Universal Analytics Example: ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’, ‘page path’); query string? or is it possible without any coding on website we can configure id's in google tag manager? Thanks! BK Mitesh0 -
URL Parameters
Hi there, I have a magento sort by feature which has indexed loads of pages in Google with urls that have /shopby/ in them.Over 8k pages have been indexed like this. I cannot edit the robots within the page but have now disallowed the urls in robots.txt - i guess this will prevent new ones being indexed but not deindex current ones? So I looked into URL parameters, I added 'shopby' as a parameter in webmaster tools and told Google not to crawl any urls with this in it, will this deindex the pages already indexed? The only other way seems to be manually removing 8k urls, which i do not want to do. Any advice much appreciated. Obviously I do not want these urls indexed as they are weak/duplicate sort by search pages, I fear the panda update would not be too kind on it long term?
Reporting & Analytics | | tdigital0 -
How to filter pages in Analytics by multiple criteria
Hello, we have several pages with the same page title. Now out of all those pages I want to pick two. Let's call them "/page1" and "/page2". For those pages I want the following information (combined for both): Avg. time on page, Bounce rate, Navigation Summary Normally I get all the information under "Content" "Pages" and by choosing the "page title" as primary dimension and clicking on the respective page title. Let's call it "page | title". Choosing the filter for 1 page works fine (I just enter "/page1" in simple filter). But how can I filter for two pages ( entering " include page ends with /page1 and include page ends with /page2" in the advance filter will show 0 results). Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | guitarslinger0 -
How do I track a PDF?
I have this eBook in PDF and I don't know how to track it: http://www.shipoverseas.com/PDFs/how-to-buy-a-car-in-usa-and-ship-it-overseas.pdf I ultimately want to do like SeoMoz in their Ranking Reports: Export to PDF Anybody have a quick idea on how to do this?
Reporting & Analytics | | Francisco_Meza0 -
Phantom urls causing 404
I have a very strange problem. When I run SEOmoz diagnostics on my site, it reveals urls that I never created. It seems to combine two slugs into a new url. For example, I have created the pages http://www.naplesrealestatestars.com/abaco-bay-condos-naples/ and http://www.naplesrealestatestars.com/beachwalk-naples-florida/ and now the url http://www.naplesrealestatestars.com/abaco-bay-condos-naples/beachwalk-naples-florida/ exists in addition to the two I created. There are over 100 of these phantom urls and they all show a 404 error when clicked on or crawled by SEOmoz. Any body know how to correct this?
Reporting & Analytics | | DanBoyle760 -
Free Keyword Tracking Tool
Hi, Any suggestion which is the best FREE keyword ranking tool. I know digital point offers one but they will install some script in the site which might slow it down... Is there any alternative?
Reporting & Analytics | | krishru0