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My website uses a querystring parameter to track where on the site a user came from to access the current page. For example:

http://example.com/my-page?source=header
http://example.com/my-page?source=footer
http://example.com/my-page?source=sidebar

As we all know, this causes Google Analytics to treat each of these urls as a separate page in reports. For example, the "All Pages" report.

Is there any way to create a custom report to display the same data as the "All Pages" report, but ignore the source querystring paramter, so that the three url's listed above would be grouped together as a single page?

I am aware that I can filter out query string parameters on the view level, but this is not what I'm looking to do. I don't want to ignore the parameters fully because I use them in other aspects of analysis. I just want the ability to ignore them on certain reports.

Can this be done?

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3 Answers 3

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No I don't believe you can tell GA to reprocess data like that for specific reports. One option is that you could create a new view where you have excluded the query parameters, so you can create as many reports as you need with it removed.

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The only functionality Google Analytics has for this is on the view level: "Exclude URL Query Parameters". I can be found under Admin -> View Settings:

Google Analytics Exclude URL Query Parameters

The documentation for it says:

Any query parameters or unique session IDs (e.g., sessionid or vid) that appear in your URLs that you do not want to see in your reports. Enter as a comma-separated list.

This setting is case sensitive. There is a 2048-character limit.

Additionally, the parameters you identify here are excluded before filters are applied, so be sure you identify them here as they appear in the original, unfiltered URIs. It has become a common mistake to apply filters, and then return to these settings to identify query parameters as they appear in your filtered reports, thus ignoring the case-sensitive requirement of this setting.

For example, if the original URI is /Section1?ParameterA=something and you use a filter to change it to /section1?parametera=something for your reports, then when you identify the query parameter here, you need to identify it as ParameterA

So in your case, you would just fill in source into that box. If you had a second parameter to exclude you would add it in after a comma: source,sessionid.

Googlebot is also going to get confused about these tracking parameters and it could lead to SEO problems. You can tell Googlebot about the parameter using the Search Console URL Parameters Tool.

I'd recommend not using tracking parameters on your URLs because of the problems and confusion it causes.

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  • My website contains a lot use of parameter page. So, the analytic is separated like /section, /section?page=2,/section?page=3. So, I have added page into exclude URL Query Parameters field. However, after I save and go back to analytic page, the result is still separated. Not combine into one. Do I need to wait for new data for it to combine into one?
    – user1995781
    Commented May 20, 2017 at 6:50
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    Yes you need to wait. Filters only effect data going forward.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented May 20, 2017 at 9:17
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It can be done using the clean URL plugin, or custom code in Google Tag Manager

https://github.com/googleanalytics/autotrack/blob/master/docs/plugins/clean-url-tracker.md

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  • Can you explain more? Such as, how the plugin works or how to use it? Short link only answers are often flagged by the system as being low quality. Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Aug 3, 2016 at 16:11

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