utm tags / duplicate content (Google Analytics and Google)

[Maciej Ziemczonek]

Hi there!

I've come across an opinion that using utm tags while creating Google Analytics links (source, medium,campaign) for different campaigns may result in duplicate content.

Meaning - if Google indexes a page through a link with different tags,
it will cause duplicate content to appear.

I have no evidence to support it. Perhaps you could help me? What are
your opinions on this subject?

Thanks in advance,

Maciek

[Receptional]

Duplicate content from tracking urls is indeed possible. In fact I think it happens quite a lot... not just with tracking tags but with session IDs.

It works like this. Google spiders a link with www.example.com/page.htm?source=yourtrackingstring and then spiders a link within the website linking to www.example.com/page.htm How is Google to know which version to index? In my experience, Google goes for the first one it gets to, but then indexes the second one as well, generating the dupe. After a while, the weight of evidence for Google should tell it to index the one without the tracking URL... but how long can you wait and how confident are you that it will get it right in the end?

I don't use G.A. but I did talk to a Google engineer about this once, and he suggested using #yourtrackingstring instead of a variable, as Google ignores everything after a #... but that's an abuse of the use of the # syntax, which should refer to a bookmark on the page. Cheeky Google.

Another solution is to drop a cookie whenevr a page is called containing the tracking string, THEN 301 the user (and hence Google) to the same URL without the tracking string, then pick the tracking string up from the cookie and install it back into your tracking system.

I doubt you could do this with GA - but we did manage to do this in IndexTools (Yahoo's system).

[Maciej Ziemczonek]

Thanks for your answer.

Anyone else could give their insight into this matter?

[travelin cat]

We track multiple domains through GA and since implementing this, our visitor numbers almost exactly doubled. Apparently GA is treating our domain as a referrer as now it shows up in the results as one.

Makes it really hard to keep track of actual visitor numbers, but at the same time we get goal tracking numbers including goal funnels that have immense importance in planning our advertising budget.