With Google constantly updating and testing new features for its search engine results pages. It seems inevitable that some of these tests will introduce unintended errors.
One thing AccuRanker has noticed that has increased significantly in recent weeks is the inclusion of the. Google Merchant Center parameter in result links in traditional search result listings, rather than in Merchant Center results.
Barry Schwartz covered this topic in his SE Round Table article on Monday, August 12 , and some of our customers are starting to see the srsltid parameter appear more and more in their results.
What is the Merchant Cenater parameter? Is the Google Merchant
A special parameter added to URLs using the ?srsltid= string to help users track the performance of pages ranked in Merchant Center results in their Google Analytics .
Webmasters and online marketers can specifically new zealand telegram track the performance of their products thanks to this parameter, as it connects the source of their traffic to Google Merchant Center.
Why can it cause havoc?
This becomes problematic when the parameter is added to traditional organic search results, as it may falsely attribute traffic that is actually coming from organic search to merchant central.
Additionally, because a unique parameter is created for each user search result, multiple URLs are created for a single landing page. Filling your analytics or reporting tools with duplicate, unnecessary information.
AccuRankers Findings Is the Google Merchant
There was a spike in URLs added with this parameter in early July, which was later fixed. But it showed up a week later and in a much wider range of domains, including the US. UK, Denmark, and Australia. And it’s still around.
Figure 1: Presence of the srsltid parameter in AccuRanker domains tracked over time
Based on initial analysis of our database, this primarily impacts results for queries targeting a transactional search intent, where a Seller Central listing would typically appear. There is also a fair amount of informational keywords. This is from a sample set of ~1.8 million tracked keywords.
Figure 2: Distribution of srsltid parameter according to keyword purpose
Consider the following example: Gucci men’s black shoes in the UK. It ranks #1 for organic search results, is located below the sponsored. Is the Google Merchant seller center carousel, and contains the srsltid parameter.
How does AccuRanker handle this?
Our team noticed this issue earlier this week and has already resolved it for our users. We have removed the parameter from the URLs served in online marketing tools for small business dashboards for our user base and. Preserved the parameterized URLs in our database.
We hope this issue will be resolved soon, but as a aub directory preventative measure it is recommended that you. Set your canonicals correctly on your preferred landing pages.
