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Avoiding duplicate content caused by tracking URLs

How do you remove tracking variables from URLs?

         

Red Mud Rookie

1:45 pm on May 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I am responsible for the SEO of a large site which uses Omniture for tracking.
Tracking users who click on specific promotions displayed on the site requires specific tracking URLs.

This is causing a duplicate content problem because the "real page" lives on www. my big site .com/productX.html
This page is indexed in Google and has a PR of 5/10

The links to this page from ads displayed around the site go to the same URL, but with tracking variables added on e.g.
productX.html?intcmp=new..... etc etc.

The version with the tracking variables in actually ranks 3rd on Google whereas the "real page" is a lot further down.
(This I assume is because it has more inbound links from other pages)

How can I track my internal traffic without being done for duplicate content and/or by using the proper URL?

I presume we could change the page so when it comes in with particular parameters, it adds a <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" /> to the <head> tag, forcing google to drop the page from the index. We'd have to be VERY sure that there was no way that tag could creep on to our chosen "official" page though

oziman

2:00 pm on May 15, 2007 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



having never worked with omniture, this might not work, just an advisory.

Can you redirect the parameters (301) to the real link after omniture gets the data?