Tracking URLS and Redirects

[BopDesign]

We have a client with many archived newsletters links that contain tracking code at the end of the URL. These old URLs are pointing to pages that don't exist anymore. Is there a way to set up permanent redirects for these old URLs with tracking code? We have tried and it doesn't seem to work.

Thank you!

[MoosaHemani]

I don’t think this seems to be an option but what you can do is to design a good looking 404 page and then if the page does not exist redirect them to 404 pages! This way you don’t have to set redirect 1 by 1...

[Lebron27]

Should not be too hard, there are options for mass 301ing.

What is going wrong? It is not very clear for me why 301 is not working

[BlueprintMarketing]

Well there when there is a will there is a way. I believe if you combine these two technologies you will be able to do this very easily. I want to say however to take 404 and have it redirected. the rule is you should always redirect 404's to good pages 200s with a permanent 301 redirect however redirect should be always 301 redirects and then they are almost impossible to track. So the key to this will be catching it right in the redirection of the person trying to access the dead link a.k.a. 404.

Never say never. So I suggest you take the technology found with this system I "totally awesome"

http://totally.awe.sm/

Look at http://support.awe.sm/

If I simply type in "track 301 redirects" you can see that it has the ability to do this. awe.sm also allows you to create its own links. It's normally designed to use custom domains meaning shorter domains however you can use your own primary full domain with no problems whatsoever.

http://support.awe.sm/customer/portal/articles/search?q=Track+301+redirects

with

https://www.kissmetrics.com/ 14 day free try then $150 a month

https://mixpanel.com/ has a free tier and will allow you more than enough to track thousands of clicks for a month at no cost. However I must warn you I'm not as familiar with this technology I do know it is very similar to what is available with kiss metrics

My first step would be to speak to support kiss metrics as well as awesome and get an idea of what they can help you with. Because totally awesome and mixed panel support as far as I know to this day do not work together

If you do not want to pay that money which I understand do not possibly want to pay that. There is a alternative that is very similar to kiss metrics called mixpanel and I am not as familiar with it however I do know that it completes a lot of the same tasks and you get my bit of you page views for free as there is a free tear that allows you use of everything that has. So if you need something that's going to last longer this may be the way you want to go depending on budget and other things

I say this because kiss-metrics is a fantastic way of tracking in addition to that they were with awesome and their support departments will help you along the way.

I hope this is better help you and this is a step in the right direction.

I truly believe that that the key is in creating custom links using awesome and then tracking them with that. Because it's all designed around using 301 redirects

Sincerely,

Thomas

[rhutchings]

I am confused about the tracking code as well.  If the tracking code are parameters appended to the url, it shouldnt have anything to do with a valid url. Maybe you should carify with an example:

• Scenario #1 - www.site.com/email is a valid url, and the link from the newsletter is www.site.com/email?utm_source=newsletter, the link should still work.  The tracking parameters have nothing to do with a page not working.  If the page still exists without the tracking parameters in the url, then you have an IIS/IT issue.  I have seen this one time where dynamic parameters (anything after a question mark) did cause issues on the server and it returned a 404 everytime you hit a page and put in parameters into the url string.  Its a systematic fix in the server settings and you would need to look to your host/IT to fix the issue and allow dynamic parameters in url strings.
• Scenario #2 - www.site.com/email is no longer a vaild page, because it was set up a long time ago for the email campaign, then page is no longer there.  In this case, no matter what the link is (tracking or no tracking), you will need to do a 301 redirect on the root url www.site.com/email and all variation of that url (including tracking urls) will automatically redirect to a specified page.

If the 301 redirecting is not working, then you have set it up wrong. It would be worth your time to manually go through and redirect each url to a proper spot, but worst case scenario is to do what Moosa Hemani pointed out and do a great 404 page.