Ignore URL Parameters

The option ‘Ignore URL parameters’ applies to Visitor Nudges. Visitor Nudges show recent visitors of the pages on your website. ‘Ignore URL parameters’ gives you the option to include or exclude visitors with URL parameters in recent visitors that show in your Nudges.

You can find this setting in the ‘Behaviour’ tab of the Site Settings page.

What are URL parameters?

URL parameters are expressions added to URLs. They come after the ‘path’, and form the part of the URL that is called the ‘query string’.

When to ignore URL parameters

Most website owners use this query string section to pass in tracking variables which don’t have an effect on the content of the page. This means that, effectively, the following two links are the same, except one has a tracking parameter:

http://www.example.com/newsletter

http://www.example.com/newsletter?utm_medium=mobile

If you leave the button for ignoring URL parameters toggled on (default setting), you decide to treat these two links the same by ignoring the query string. With this setting, both visitors with and without tracking variables will show as recent visitors in your Nudges.

If you choose to toggle the button off, visitors with tracking variables such as

?utm_medium=mobile

won’t be counted as a visitor and won’t show in your Visitor Nudges

If you use tracking variables and don’t want to waste some great social proof, we recommend you leave the button for ignoring URL parameters toggled on.

When not to ignore URL parameters

In some other situations, you may be using your query string to modify the content of the page. You might, for example, show different content on the page depending on the category a visitor selected previously. This can result in links with different URL parameters, such as:

http://www.example.com/products?category=saas

http://www.example.com/products?category=ecommerce

Now in this case, you many not want us to ignore the URL parameters since the two pages above are different depending on the the value of the page parameter, in the example ‘saas’ or ‘ecommerce’.