Will URL Canonicalization affect Google Analytics reports?

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Yes of course! Before that, we all know the drawback of being with out canonicalization. Yes, it will create duplication issue.

Now how come it relates with Google Analytics? With out URL canonicalization, you can’t get the actual Google Analytics reports! Let’s see how it is…

Once a visitor arrives to the web page implemented with GA tracking code, GA will start monitor and save all the happenings in the web page.

If a visitor comes to a page www.domain.com GA will write down the actions happening in www.domain.com. Vice versa, If a visitor comes to a page domain.com GA will separately write down the actions happening in domain.com.

Now imagine what if a same visitor reaches the page domain.com after viewing the page www.domain.com. Without any doubts, it will be calculated as two visits. When the visitor is on the “www.domain.com” GA only knows about things that happened on the “www.domain.com”.  When the visitor is on the “domain.com” GA only knows about things that happened on the “domain.com”. One visit will have all of the page views of www.domain.com, and another visit will have all of the page views of domain.com.

We will be getting wrong data’s for the following reports

• Unique page views
• Avg. Time on Site
• Pages/Visit
• Goal conversion

If some visitor reached the other version of URL while completing the goal, you could not get the actual goal conversion reports.

So it’s better to sit now, and finish up the redirection for all your websites. Following are the possible versions of URL,

redirect everything to one.

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp

Are you a SEO newbie? Looking for what is URL Canonicalization? Click Here