Query Parameters in Google Analytics
By: Ziad Ismail
Tags: Google, Google Analytics, Query

How do I identify URLs with query parameters in Google Analytics?

To find URLs with query parameters in Google Analytics, visit your pages report (Behaviour>Site Content>All Pages) and filter for \?|\= (Regex saying “any page including = or ?). this may provide you with a list of pages that contain query parameters.

You can then bear your pages (either manually or using Excel’s text-to-columns) to settle on out common ones. an issue parameter is that the string that comes between “?” and “=”.

Make a listing of these parameters, determine what function they have, and choose what needs to be through with them. I exploit three options:

Strip from URL

Rewrite to be more useful

Leave

This can be determined by the role they play on your website. As a rough guide, if a change in query parameter doesn’t change the content on the page, strip it from the URL. If there’s some useful information that’s difficult to read, re-write it. If it’s entirely useful, leave it as is.

How to rewrite URL query parameters in Google Analytics

To rewrite URLs in Google Analytics you will be ready to use a search-and-replace filter by visiting Admin>Filters and creating a replacement custom filter.

Select “Request URI” from the filter field

Put the \?[query1,quer2]=.* within the search string where query1 and query2 are those you’d prefer to switch with useful information

Add whatever text you’d prefer to figure out instead of the query parameter in “Replace String”

Save the filter and annotate your changes.

Filters

We can also use filters to urge obviate some or all query parameters from our pages. Filters are configured at the account level and will be applied to multiple views immediately, so this will be likely a more robust option if you’re working with several views.

To remove query parameters with filters, we’ll want to use the exploration and Replace filter. enter your Admin panel and find “All Filters” under your account. Click to feature a replacement filter and alter the filter type to “Custom” and choose “Search and Replace.” The filter field should be “Request URI” to tell Google Analytics that we wish to look in our page paths.

We will use the Search String to identify the query parameter to induce elimination.

Three sorts of query parameters

Before throwing salt and H2O at any query parameter you see in Google Analytics, ask yourself — why does it exist, and does it should be exercised?

I’ve noticed there are 3 kinds of query parameters:

Rubbish query parameters that just pollute the data (e.g. Marketing tags). These allow your analytics software to understand what campaign they’re associated with. They (usually) don’t serve a singular a definite version of the page, and within the URL report should show in one line of information.

Fewer rubbish tags that serve a special version of an existing page (e.g. filters).

These tags are things like /bedsheets/?colour=1235. Maybe you’d wish to grasp if filters were used (in which case you simply must show two pages:

/bedsheets/ and /bedsheets/filtered, for example) otherwise, you need to get actual data out of this like what colour corresponds to “1235”.

Not rubbish query parameters that are different pages when. Occasionally, entire websites are built on query parameters, and each one encompasses a purpose and maybe a private page which is ok (maybe).

Query Parameters Splinter Data

Query parameters slice URLs in Google Analytics. the identical webpage on your site is additionally variable into tens, hundreds, or (for highly trafficked sites) thousands of assorted pages in GA when combinations of parameters are tacked onto this URL. Hence, all associated metrics are splintered additionally. this could make cohesive analysis extremely difficult and in some cases impossible.

For instance, imagine you’re trying to tug the very best viewed pages of the past month. With parameters ending the identical page into unique URLs, the number of pageviews is fragmented. At a high level, this undermines the page view-based performance of anybody page. If you wanted to dig further into these pages, common questions like where this traffic is coming from, what the bounce rate is, and also the way people are interacting with it become nearly impossible.

2. Query Parameters end in High Cardinality

We already know that question parameters can multiply the number of pages in your content reports. If this causes the number of rows in your page reports to exceed 50K day by day, you’ll run into high cardinality issues. Essentially, Google sets limits on the number of values a dimension can have. For the page dimension, after 50K values (or rows) of information has been filled, pages will begin to be the (other) value (here’s Google’s exact explanation of this problem).

Thousands of pages are often lumped into (other), and this data is largely inaccessible to research. Making any judgments on this incomplete data will end in highly inaccurate assumptions and misguided decision-making.

3. Personally Identifiable Information Can Often Linger in These Parameters

In the depths of query parameter combinations (especially for eCommerce companies) may lurk an unnecessary evil: personally identifiable information (PII).

PII is any information that may be traced back to a minimum of one specific individual. It can are available in the form of:

Names

Phone numbers

Addresses

Emails

Credit card numbers

Social security numbers

If users are ever prompted to enter any of this information on your website, you want to be wary that you simply aren’t sending this data through Google’s servers (which would then end up within the URL or page title of your Google Analytics Data).

*Email addresses, telephone numbers, and personal street addresses in data

Unfortunately, when URLs have large combinations of parameters, it’s going to be difficult to differentiate this PII.

Failure to exclude this information from your Google Analytics data and to cease sending it to Google’s server might be an immediate violation of Google’s policy and will end in termination of your account — see ya later data. to forestall this wrongful termination, you will not only remove these parameters at the view level but also strip these parameters at the information collection level through Google Tag Manager.

Hopefully, this, and also the explanations above, have a minimum of make you consider identifying and omitting extraneous query parameters from your data.

Now you’d possibly be thinking, how do I exclude the “extraneous”?