Google Analytics Audit Test #

48

Duplicate Parameters in Page URLs

Why It Matters:

Critical to understanding user and site behavior.

Industries:

All

Checks For:

Accuracy

How accurate is your recent data?

Insight Category:

Attribution

Can you tell which marketing efforts are working?

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Background

A GA4 audit is essential for uncovering missing insights—key data points that organizations don't yet know and can act upon. A well-done audit evaluates both behavioral tracking and traffic attribution, ensuring each is accurate and useful. It also assesses whether the data collected truly supports business decisions and reporting.

Test Detail

This test identifies whether page URLs captured in GA4 include duplicate query parameters (e.g., utm_source=google&utm_source=google, or product_id=123&product_id=123).

Duplicate parameters can:

  • clutter reports,
  • inflate pageview counts,
  • and cause issues with:
    • content grouping,
    • campaign tracking,
    • and site performance reporting.

They also contribute to cardinality issues, especially if dynamic or redundant values are included repeatedly.

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How to Conduct This Test

Basic Tests

  • In GA4 > Explore, create a Free-form report:
    • Dimension: Page path + query string
    • Metric: Views
  • Sort by page views and scan URLs for:
    • Repeated query keys (e.g., ?utm_campaign=sale&utm_campaign=sale)
    • Long, bloated URL strings with multiple redundant parameters
  • Use BigQuery if available to write a query that identifies duplicate keys in the page_location field.
  • If you see many variations of the same page due to duplicated parameters, this is a sign of poor URL hygiene.

Automated, Free Audit

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Or Hire a pro to help spot and fix noisy URLs in your GA4 reporting.

How To Fix

  • Work with developers to deduplicate query parameters before they hit GA4:
  • Use URL-rewriting logic in GTM or server-side tagging to clean up page_location
  • In your CMS or routing rules, ensure URLs are canonicalized or rewritten to strip redundant parameters
  • In GA4 Admin > Data Settings > Page URL parameters, consider excluding parameters that frequently duplicate or offer no reporting value
  • Review ad and email platforms for links that append duplicate UTM parameters
  • Hire a pro to clean up your URL structure, reduce reporting noise, and improve your analytics efficiency.

Tips from a Google Analytics Consultant

Focus on Insights

Every Google Analytics audit should result in a plan for more insights.

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An insight is:

  • something you don't know
  • and can act on to improve performance

The Goal

Identify and remove insight blockers. Don't get tempted to track things you can't act on!

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