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We have some issue with duplicate content on Google SERP. The problem is that we are using Click Tracking on Webtrends that adds a parameter after the URL. This is what a URL can look like when Webtrends loads on the webpage: https://www.example.com/private/loan.html?WT.ac=xxxxx-xxxx_xxx_animate_loan_button-v1&WT.svl=Menu

As I am aware Google Crawl the links and adds also the parameters so this content is duplicated because if you remove everything after ?WT.ac the same content is shown.

How can I prevent either Webtrends to stoop adding this or make Google not crawl these parameters? I have seen some ideas but not found a real answer I can use:

  1. Add self-referral
  2. noindex on parameter "WT.xx=.*"
  3. Add the parameters after crawl with JavaScript
  4. Add the parameter to a meta-tag

I am not so familiar with which method I can use and is the best?

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Firstly noindex parametrized urls. X-Robots-Tag is my preferred way to go.

Then, after you realized, parametrized urls are already out of index, block them against crawling through robots.txt, with something like Disallow: *?*

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  • Hi, thanks for input. But adding X-Robots-Tag must be added at individual pages. In the CMS there is only one page but in Google Crawl there are 2 because the parameter added in link AFTER webtrends is loaded. So i cannot go in CMS and add this to the main page?
    – Sidra Muntaha
    Commented May 21, 2019 at 10:20
  • Using X-Robots-Tag for no index will prevent those pages from contributing any SEO value. There are clearly links into them. There are better options than this.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented May 21, 2019 at 10:36

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