Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google SERP showing a URL with UTM_source attached - why? Can I stop it?
-
I just found a Google search results page showing a URL with a UTM source tag attached. Any idea how or why this has happened? How can I stop it as I'm guessing this is overwriting my organic visits with referrals from this site.
See attached photo for pic of SERP page.
The link is going here: http://employment.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/parentalleave/?utm_source=newzealandnow.govt.nz
-
I believe there are a couple of possible solutions to this.
1. You could set up canonical tags on the pages that utilise query parameters so that they always point to the parent page.
Alternatively
2. You could set it up so that your robots.txt file disallows all query strings, thus preventing them from being indexed. (be careful with this version in case Google cant crawl the original source)
Disallow: /*?
it will take however a further crawl from Google before you could see any changes to the indexation of your pages.
Also in Webmaster tools you have a query parameters section within the Crawl menu. You can add in the variables in order to tell Google how to handle them. Learn more here. Hope this helps.
Tim
-
Hi Danielle,
I have checked from my end but I'm not seeing URL with utm_source, after clicking on search result it is going to http://employment.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/parentalleave/
If you are still seeing the same it means your page is indexed with utm_source you can use rel=canonical on http://employment.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/parentalleave/ or you can also use 301 redirect.
You are not getting correct source because you are searching in Google and showing the page http://employment.govt.nz/er/holidaysandleave/parentalleave/?utm_source=newzealandnow.govt.nz but logically source should be Google not newzealandnow.govt.nz
Hope this helps.
Thanks
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
-
Google Analytics Goals - Button Tracking
Does anyone know if there is a really easy way to track a button in Google Analytics yourself? It seems that most button click goal setups involve some use of tricky code and I'm wondering if there is a much easier way to do this that will allow us to simply setup and track certain button clicks as goal conversions in Analytics. Your help here is much appreciated!
Reporting & Analytics | | Gavo0 -
% Change - Google analytics - how to calculate?
Hi All,
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnPalmer
I have two dates with two different numbers I want to calculate the "% Change" like google analytics, The numbers of June 2015 - 127,931 sessions
The numbers of June 2014 - 90914 sessions please tell me what is the %Change. Best. J0 -
Getting google impressions for a site not in the index...
Hi all Wondering if i could pick the brains of those wise than myself... my client has an https website with tons of pages indexed and all ranking well, however somehow they managed to also set their server up so that non https versions of the pages were getting indexed and thus we had the same page indexed twice in the engine but on slightly different urls (it uses a cms so all the internal links are relative too). The non https is mainly used as a dev testing environment. Upon seeing this we did a google remove request in WMT, and added noindex in the robots and that saw the index pages drop over night. See image 1. However, the site still appears to getting return for a couple of 100 searches a day! The main site gets about 25,000 impressions so it's way down but i'm puzzled as to how a site which has been blocked can appear for that many searches and if we are still liable for duplicate content issues. Any thoughts are most welcome. Sorry, I am unable to share the site name i'm afraid. Client is very strict on this. Thanks, Carl image1.png
Reporting & Analytics | | carl_daedricdigital0 -
Google Analytics shows most referrers as "Direct" -- What are some better tools?
Very often Google Analytics will show 50-90% of our referrers as (direct) which is not very helpful. Are there other tools out there that will provide a clearer breakdown of what other websites are sending us our traffic? Specifically, I want to be able to be able to tell who are the top traffic referrers to my top performing pages on my site for the last 30 days. (I want to be able to study this on a per-page basis.) Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Brand_Psychic0 -
How can I see what Google sees when it crawls my page?
In other words, how can see the text and what not it sees from start to finish on each page. I know there was a site, but I can't remember it.
Reporting & Analytics | | tiffany11030 -
How can I use Google Analytics to detect users viewing my website on a TV?
I want to see in Google Analytics whether or not people are viewing my website on a TV, such as with a smart TV or other device connected to their TV. These are the only ways to do this that I have found so far: Operating system: Google TV, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Xbox Browser: Nintendo Browser, Playstation 3 Are there other data points that I can reliably use to segment these users?
Reporting & Analytics | | RCF0 -
Setting up Google Analytics for Subsites
I currently have one main .com site and am planning on launching geo-location subsites .co.uk, .com.au, .ru, etc... Traffic will flow between both sites and some of the content on the subsites will be duplicate and therefore include a canonical tag to the main site. I want to set up GA to capture who is going to the subsites and vice versa and correctly capture crossover traffic. Any advice on implementing advanced analytics directly (or links to sources that will direct me the right direction for this project)
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0 -
How to remove unwanted dynamic parameters from a URL in Google Analytics
Hi, Would really appreciate some help with this. I have been experimenting with RegEx to achieve this but as I’ve never used it before am currently failing miserably. We have conversion pages i need to set goals for that are formatted as below: https://www.domain.co.uk//Application_Form/(S(ewhbqp5cki0mppuzukunkqno))/enterCardDetails.aspx I need to remove the (s(xxx)) section from the URL as rather than one pages i currently have thousands of unique URL's. What’s catching me out is that as it’s not a URL parameter I can’t discount and as half way through can’t just do head matches etc to /entercarddetails Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sarbs0