How to Fix the Dreaded Duplicate URL in Google Analytics

How familiar are you with the trailing slash? Simply put, it’s the slash at the end of a URL. With it or without it, you still go to the same site. So what does it matter?

Well, for analytics, this one tiny slash matters greatly — and can skew your reports. When viewing your Site Content URL report in Google Analytics (GA), you can spot the places that have two versions of the same URL, one with and one without a trailing slash.

Take this example: this URL, http://www.citychiconline.com/new-in, and this URL, http://www.citychiconline.com/new-in/, both display the same page.

But in GA, they would report out as unique URLs. Like this:

Look familiar?

If you don’t have a trailing .html (or similar) at the end of a URL, many content and eCommerce platforms (like WordPress and Magento) allow you to reach the same page.

But this becomes a problem when Google Analytics records the URLs differently and pushes this page view to your GA dashboard.

The GA tag doesn’t care if the content is the same — it’s simply recording the pageview URL, which is different (i.e., www.mysite.com/product-name versus www.mysite.com/product-name/).

Let’s dig deeper into how this happens — and how you can fix it.

How do people get to both URL versions?

 This is because:

1. Your affiliate partners may link to your site in a version you don’t want.
2. Team members managing your on-site content/links may not know to use a trailing slash or not.
3. The development team likely doesn’t know what version you prefer when building new features.
4. Blogs or other inbound links don’t ask you what you prefer.

Aside from adding in server-side solutions (which can be a headache) to always force a trailing slash or not, trying to control which URL version users go to will be near impossible.

Why fixing duplicate URLs is important

1. Clean data: Dirty data like this can warp strategic decisions if you’re trying to slice, dice, and finalize insights on performance campaigns.
2. Save time: Analysts will require more time in providing accurate insights to you based on dirty data that requires manual intervention.

So how can you fix duplicate links?

If you can’t keep them from happening altogether, you can remove them from GA so that they don’t confuse or adversely affect your analytics data.

How to fix duplicate URLs in reporting

Step 1: Create a new GA view so you can test and validate if this fix works for you before you apply it to your day-to-day view(s)

Step 2: Create a new advanced filter with this regex (screenshot below), which performs this manipulation of your data:

If a URL does not have query parameters at the end of the URL AND is a standalone URL AND does not have a trailing slash at the end of the URL, then add a trailing slash at the end of the URL

Here is the regex for the advanced rule to test:

^(/[a-z0–9/_\-]*[^/])$

Once this has been completed, save your filter.

Step 3: Verify this new filter works as expected.

To test and verify this is working, follow these steps: you can use the Real Time report in Google Analytics to:

1. In one browser tab go to a version of your site you’d like to test (e.g. yourdomain.com/new-in)
2. In a 2nd additional browser tab go to the version of the same URL with the trailing slash (e.g. yourdomain.com/new-in/)
3. Go to Google Analytics > Real Time Report > Top Active Pages and you should have 2 active pages from the previous steps!

One important note is that this filter will not update historical data, only new data going forward. 

Bonus: Fix Duplicate Content Issues

This post (to my surprise) ranks fairly well for people (maybe like you!) looking for answers on how to address duplicate content issues on their sites. A few live chat conversations later and I thought I should address this topic head on here 🙂 .