Ignoring URL parameters from caching key

When you run ad campaigns or try to track visitors from different sources, URL parameters come in handy. Many analytics services such as Google Analytics or Facebook Ads append multiple parameters to the URL to track visitors and collect the efficacy of ad campaigns. While the data collections for analytics happen in the visitor’s browsers, the underlying HTML page served to all such visitors remains the same.

The cache of a page is however generated for every unique URL of your website, including the parameters in the URL. In some cases, this is undesired and doesn’t make any sense to grow the cache size for duplicate pages.

Best performance for ad campaigns

RabbitLoader is pre-equipped to give you the best performance when you run ad campaigns from many known networks. Our software ignores all popularly known tracking parameters which can be safely assumed not to change the cached page’s behavior. These parameters are –

• _gl – used by Google Analytics for cross-domain tracking
• epik – appended by Pinterest
• fbclid – this is automatically added to outbound links on Facebook
• gbraid – Google Ad click is coming from iOS device
• gclid – Google Ad click is coming from a non-iOS device
• msclkid – appended on Mircosoft ad click
• utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term – used for Google Analytics
• vgo_ee – ActiveCampaign parameter contains the encrypted email address of the contact
• wbraid – Google Ad click is coming from iOS device
• zenid – used by Zen Cart

Adding more URL parameters to the ignore list

If you feel the default settings are not enough for your website, you can add more parameters to the ignore list based on your website’s setup. The user-added parameters come into effect in addition to the default parameters mentioned above.

To add custom GET URL query parameters, go to the Settings tab under the WordPress plugins home page, add each parameter in a new line and save the settings.

• You can put one parameter per line.
• Parameter name should be without any special characters such as &, ? or =
• Regex or shell wildcard pattern can not be used here

Common Questions

1. Will my tracking get affected if I ignore a parameter?
   
   No. As the tracking code usually runs on a visitor’s browser using JavaScript, ignoring a parameter will not affect tracking at all.
2. Will it create any impact on optimization speed?
   
   Yes, if you put parameters to the ignore list, the page optimization rate would be faster as the parameters will prevent duplicate pages from being optimized. The cache hit ratio will increase too which is good.
3. Which campaigns are taken care of by default by RabbitLoader?
   
   RabbitLoader is optimized out of the box for known networks such as Facebook, Google, Mircosoft, Pinterest, Zen Cart, etc.