Will Campaign Tagging In 301 Redirects Cause Canonical Issues

[Planet13]

Has anyone had canonical issues by adding google analytics campaign tagging to 301 redirects?

I am tempted to add those tags to a bunch of 301 redirects but even though the destination pages have a canonical tag on them, I don't want to cause any indexing problems.

BTW: The reason I want to add campaing tags is because about a third of my traffic is listed as (direct) (none) and since we do no other promotion (and since that traffic fluctuates nearly parallel with traffic google organic traffic patterns), I want to see if that (direct) (none) traffic is actually from 301 redirects.

Thanks in advance.


_{(I understand that correct canonical tags SHOULD prevent ANY problem with URL parameters, but you can't tell with google nowadays.)}

[incrediBILL]

Define: "adding a tag to a 301 redirect page"

In WebmasterWorld we have a redirect script int the middle, called r.cgi that processes all outbound links, and AFAIK you couldn't take that page specifically because all it does is redirect to the final page.

We have as follows:

Source Page (with link) -> r.cgi - > Destination Page

The r.cgi is just a tracking script so we know how people navigate via the system and which links are popular, etc.
Is that your current setup or are you just redirecting all requests to the original page to the new page via Apache 301s?

(I understand that correct canonical tags SHOULD prevent ANY problem with URL parameters, but you can't tell with google nowadays.)

The final destination page can be tagged and the canonical set so in theory it will eventually become the only page in the SERPS.

Be careful with indexing parameters as:

example.com?a=1
example.com?a=2
example.com?a=1&b=1
example.com?a=1&b=2
example.com?a=1&b=1&c=1
etc.

Are all separate pages so 3-4 parameters can create an infinite array of "thin content" pages that are indexed and screw you over big time.

I recommend using G WMTs to tell it to skip any parameters that aren't of any strategic value and just focus on SKU, SIZE and COLOR for instance or you could easily end up with a bazillion indexed pages.

It happens to many people, they never saw it coming, some don't even know it's a leading cause of stores being hammered with thing content and instead of simply fixing their indexing, they run off and write all new content which then suffers the same exact problems because the parameters are still the same.

FWIW, most people that get snared in Gogle updates tend of have always had tons of bad practices and incomplete SEO on their sites, it was just a matter of time.