Apple Maps UTM'S update!

[Raph2805]

Good day all,

Any Apple Maps experts care to share with me how you go about tracking traffic sent from Apple Maps in GA? I read here in 2019 it wasn't possible without setting up redirects which i dont want to get into.

This was 2 years ago, fast forward to today and im hoping adding UTM's is fine...can anybody confirm?

Thanks in advance

Rafa

 

[ElizabethRule]

Have you seen this thread, where @JoyHawkins suggests "using a different URL than you use anywhere else but that still opens the location page information. You'd want to make it a URL that has a canonical tag to the real URL."

Basically, you'll create a duplicate of a page you already have on the site you want to send Apply traffic to. That way, you can track traffic to that page and know it's only Apple map traffic. Further, you can no-index this page to make sure it doesn't show on organic search. Do not link to this page anywhere else on your site.

As far as I know, you still can't add UTMs to Apple maps, but with the above solution, no re-directs are needed (which probably wouldn't work anyway per some comments on the thread I linked to).

 

[Raph2805]

Have you seen this thread, where @JoyHawkins suggests "using a different URL than you use anywhere else but that still opens the location page information. You'd want to make it a URL that has a canonical tag to the real URL."

Basically, you'll create a duplicate of a page you already have on the site you want to send Apply traffic to. That way, you can track traffic to that page and know it's only Apple map traffic. Further, you can no-index this page to make sure it doesn't show on organic search. Do not link to this page anywhere else on your site.

As far as I know, you still can't add UTMs to Apple maps, but with the above solution, no re-directs are needed (which probably wouldn't work anyway per some comments on the thread I linked to).

Hi @ElizabethRule thanks for your response, yes that was the post i saw, but as it was over 2 years old i kinda hoped things have moved forward. My clients are quite large organisations with websites on bespoke platforms where its not easy to duplicate a location page, adding a no index tag etc . It would all have to be done by their web agency and would incur a cost.

 

[ElizabethRule]

Dang, I understand that headache. Maybe one day GA will start attributing Apple maps traffic correctly, but unfortunately, that day is not today.

 

[Raph2805]

Dang, I understand that headache. Maybe one day GA will start attributing Apple maps traffic correctly, but unfortunately, that day is not today.

Fingers crossed!