If GCLID and UTM used to be the most popular ad tracking tags, a new one has joined the list - srsltid.
srsltid is an automatic click tag from Merchant Center that appears in the free listings of Google Shopping.
In a URL, it looks something like this:
site.com/?srsltid=AdGWZVSUso0I1nBDkGKHruq-SEAUXmkAX
The srsltid encodes information about the user’s click, which is needed for tracking purposes. Now, let's break down where this comes from.
In Google Merchant Center, there is an option for automatic tagging of clicks from the free listings in Google Shopping. You can enable this automatic tagging, but there are a few details to keep in mind.
👉 You must link Merchant Center with your Google Analytics 4 property:
👉 In your Google Analytics reports, you’ll see a new channel called “Organic Shopping,” through which you can analyze the performance of your free listings. It will look something like this:
👉 This tagging does not work with Universal Analytics, and you cannot link it with UA for this purpose, so it's exclusive to GA4.
In the fall of 2024, many online store owners noticed URLs containing "srsltid" indexed in Google, even though this tag has been around for over a year. This can happen if you haven’t blocked these pages from being indexed, just as you might have done with gclid or fbclid in the past.
There are two ways to address this.
👉 If only a few pages are indexed, you can block them from being indexed in robots.txt using the following command:
Disallow: /*srsltid*
👉 If many pages have already been indexed, it’s better not to block them in robots.txt. Instead, double-check the rel="canonical" tag in your code, which, according to Google’s guidelines, should indicate the canonical (main) version of the page to be indexed. Then, wait for Google to update the index. From experience, we can tell you that Google takes quite a long time to respond to canonical tags, but unfortunately, there aren’t many other options.
That’s the essence of srsltid without unnecessary details. We hope this material was helpful to you. Until next time.
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