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Paul Murphy
6,162 PointsREFERRER & Root Link
Hello,
My companies website appears to have a problem when looking at google analytics
When filtering under page title for site content I find the following anomalies.
For page title "Product 1 | First Product | Product One
I get the following links to that page
www.example.com/Products/product-1.htm (Correct root)
www.example.com/Products/product-1.htm?REFERRER=ExampleReferrer (Referring link)
Can anyone help on this as the Referring link is showing up search results for targeted keywords instead of the root link.
1 Answer
Alan Johnson
7,625 PointsYou'll want to tweak your settings in Google Webmaster tools to tell them to ignore that referrer parameter, since it's not important that they crawl that additional page.
You could also configure the ignored parameter in your robots.txt. This answer on StackOverflow outlines how to do that. Using robots.txt would be a bit more universal (i.e. all search engines would honor it).
Paul Murphy
6,162 PointsPaul Murphy
6,162 PointsMany thanks Alan, I've tweaked the Google webmaster settings initially but will go back and revisit the issue.
Thanks, Paul
Paul Murphy
6,162 PointsPaul Murphy
6,162 PointsHi Alan,
Sorry to trouble you with this again.
I tweaked the setting in webmaster tools so that google would recognise this URL as "Representative" Also, I dropped a robot.txt file with the following string:
Still no luck, I need to know how to change this as the referrer link is showing up against the root domain link in search results.
Thanks, Paul
Alan Johnson
7,625 PointsAlan Johnson
7,625 PointsI would have thought it would do it. You may want to use something like http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check to test if the syntax is working as expected on your urls.
Beyond that, you may want to look at specifying canonical urls on those referrer based ones - you can learn more about that at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en.
Paul Murphy
6,162 PointsPaul Murphy
6,162 PointsThere was a "wildcard" error on the robots.txt file. I think I have managed to fix it as it's not coming back with any errors now.
I have already tried the canonical route previously with no luck. Hopefully this does the trick. Will keep you posted... Many thanks for the assistance.
Paul Murphy
6,162 PointsPaul Murphy
6,162 PointsHi Alan,
Still having a problem with this I have tried all of your suggestions and still getting the referrer results show up in not only search results but also analytics. Is there anything else you can suggest?
List of things that haven't worked so far:
Just noticed something interesting though, the referrer search result is not showing in yahoo or bing only through google search. Another piece to the puzzle hopefully.
Alan Johnson
7,625 PointsAlan Johnson
7,625 PointsI've been thinking a few days now, and I'm stumped. I'm really not sure what the issue is. You may want to try and reach out to the Google Webmaster Tools forum and see if you get any great answers there. I'd love to see what you hear!
Paul Murphy
6,162 PointsPaul Murphy
6,162 PointsI've spoken to the company providing the referring link and they have tweaked something from their end and that seems to have done the trick. The referrer appears to be slowly disappearing from analytics.
Hopefully this is the last we hear of it! Thanks for your help Alan