Semalt – 3 Tips To Remove URL Parameters From Your Google Analytics Reports

Google Analytics parameters are a handy way to track the online marketing efforts. If your Google Analytics account is cluttered up with hundreds to thousands of unique pages that don't actually exist, the chances are that the ugly URLs are interfering your data. Such URLs do not look normal, and the parameters are appended to a single URL again and again. As a result, most of the visitors are redirected to your homage, and you should increase the number of visitors by removing the ugly URL parameters from your Google Analytics reports.

For this, you should bear in mind the following tips stipulated by Oliver King, a leading expert from Semalt.

1. Exclude the Query Parameters:

Check your URL for language or session information and exclude the query parameters. First of all, you should determine which URL parameters are useless and should be excluded from your reports. The next step is to check the View Settings option in your Google Analytics account and add the list of query parameters you would like to exclude. It's possible to get them cleaned up within minutes. For this, you should adjust the settings in the Google Analytics account and create filters for all ugly URL parameters. If you want to set up a new Google Analytics account, you might be afraid of messing up your data with another Google Analytics account. To avoid confusions, you should go to the Profile section of your existing or new Google Analytics account and add the URL parameters in different filters. Once you have added them, don't forget to save the changes and wait some time for the data to pour into the new or existing Google Analytics profile.

2. Strip the site search:

You should exclude the search query parameters from your Google Analytics report to ensure your site's safety. In the View Settings option, go to the Site Search Settings and click on the Strip query parameters out of URLs button. You should bear in mind that the Google Analytics accounts do not reprocess data at any cost. In other words, you cannot remove the parameters from the previous data. It means the data going forward is going to have the URL parameters removed.

3. Consolidate the homepage and trailing slashes:

If your web server serves up a homepage that looks like the index.php file, you should consolidate the homepage as well as the trailing slashes. The Google Analytics can strip away a domain, such asrazyegg.com, and checks the remaining portions of a URL string to count the total number of unique pages. As a result, the dynamic URL parameters can create unique pages for Google Analytics to get recorded.

Final Thoughts:

Google Analytics will log your multiple URLs as the unique pages. Thus, the report is going to be cluttered with hundreds to thousands of unique page views that do not exist and fail to provide any value to your business. It is possible for your URL parameters not to provide the insightful information. For example, most of the URL parameters with product numbers, discount, and pricing codes are recognized as unique page views by your Google Analytics account.