Query parameters can sometimes store useful pieces of information in our URLs, but they can cause problems in our Google Analytics data. Query parameters can break apart our pages and make them hard to analyze in our All Pages report. By Amanda Geisler.
An important note before we get started: Personally Identifiable Information (PII) can not be removed with View Settings or filters. Data is collected at the property level, so the View Settings and filters do not stop the data from being collected and violates Google’s Terms of Service.
Query parameter removal with App + Web is a bit different because of the automatic pageview tracking. If you need to remove parameters from your page paths, you can use the page_location field in your Configuration tag in GTM.
– Amanda Geislerr
The article then discusses the following:
- View settings
- Filters
- Remove queries with Google Tag Manager
- App + Web properties from Google Analytics
- Better reporting on page performance
There are multiple ways to tackle query parameters in your URLs depending on your set up and implementation. If your queries do contain valuable information about your users or content, you may choose to store them as custom dimensions. Stripping query parameters from page paths can streamline reporting and help to mitigate (other) in your content reports. Nice one!
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