Today was about conversion tracking for me.
I hate it.
Why?
I hate it because conversion tracking is always messy, and I hate it because tracking pretends to present some absolute “truth” (which, as we know, doesn’t exist).
But mostly because it is messy.
The mess I found myself in today was duplicate UTM parameters in the expanded landing page report.
Yes. You’ve read that right, I’ve been analyzing UTM parameters in an expanded landing page report!
Boy, I love my job.
Here’s an example of what I am talking about:
(Notice the duplicate utm_source and utm_medium in green and red.)
Again… messy!
So my questions were:
1. “How the F did this happen, and how do I fix this ASAP?”
2. “What does GA4 do when it sees duplicate UTM parameters in a URL?”
Number 1 was easy. I needed to fix the account-level tracking template and some tracking templates at the campaign and ad group level.
Number 2 was not so easy.
It took me 1.5 hours of searching the web to finally land on a LinkedIn post with the answer by Michele Pisani:
“I have carried out tests and in both GA4 and BigQuery, the last (duplicate) parameter is the one defining the value.”
So, now I know. Thanks to Michele, the OCD-PPC-Geek in me can finally sleep.
Have a good night.
– Nils