Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?

[askotzko]

New to SEOmoz, loving it so far.

I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly.

I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages.

Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)?

Thank you.

[mediabase]

This post is deleted!

[Dr-Pete]

I find Google is usually good about UTM parameters, but not always - for use in Adwords, they're almost never a problem, but when you use them for custom tracking, they can start to cause duplicates. Bing/Yahoo also don't handle them very well.

I'm not sure on the scope of your site/usage right now, so it's hard to give a definitive solution, but my gut reaction is that I would use canonical tags on the affected pages. If you want to double-check, you can test for the URLs in the Google index. Use something like:

site:example.com inurl:utm=

If they're not being indexed, you're probably ok, and can just keep an eye on it. If it's just a few landing pages, though (and not a massive, site-wide issue), I'd be proactive and put a canonical tag in place, if it were me.

[askotzko]

Thanks, Peter. I didn't think to check the index. They aren't currently being indexed, but I'm going to take your advice and add them in anyway.

[kchandler]

Just found this today and after a year and a few months it is still helpful, thanks Dr Pete!