Is the Google Merchant Center (srsltid) parameter wreaking havoc on your SERPs?

[Ashik Sarkar9]

With Google constantly updating and testing new features for its search engine results pages, it seems inevitable that unintentional errors will occur as a result of some of these tests.

One that AccuRanker has noticed has increased significantly in recent weeks is the presence of the Google Merchant Center parameter being added to results links in traditional search results listings, rather than in Merchant Center results.

Barry Schwartz reported on this in his SE Round Table article on Monday, August 12, and several of our clients are starting to see the srsltid parameter appearing more and more in their results.

What is the Merchant Center parameter?
This is a specific parameter that is added to URLs using the string ?srsltid= to help users track the performance of pages that appear in Merchant Center results in their Google Analytics .


For example w ww.example.com/mens/product-black?srsltid=123xyz


Webmasters and online marketers can specifically track the performance of their products using this parameter, as it attributes the source of their traffic to Google Merchant Centre.

Why can it wreak havoc?
This is problematic when the parameter is added to traditional organic search results, oman telegram as it could falsely attribute traffic to the mall when it actually comes from organic search.

And because a unique parameter is generated for each user search result, a large number of URLs are generated for a single landing page, flooding your analytics or reporting tools with duplicate and unnecessary information.

AccuRankers Conclusions
There was an initial spike in URLs added with this parameter in early July, which was subsequently corrected, only to reappear a week later and across a much wider range of domains in multiple markets including the US, UK, Denmark and Australia. And it's still there.


Graph of unique domains with srsltid over time showing a large increase in July 2024
Fig 1: Presence of the srsltid parameter in domains crawled by AccuRanker over time

From the initial analysis of our database, it appears that it mainly affects the results of queries with a transactional search intent, where an advertisement for a shopping centre usually appears. It also appears in a considerable amount for keywords with an informational intent. This is a sample of approximately 1.8 million keywords tracked.


Pie chart showing spread of srsltid parameter across keyword intent
Fig. 2: Distribution of the srsltid parameter based on keyword intent

Let's take the following example: gucci mens black shoes in the UK . It appears in position 1 of the organic search results, below the sponsored mall carousel, and contains the srsltid parameter.


SERP result of Gucci mens black shoes showing the url containing the srsltid parameter in the URL
How does AccuRanker manage it?
Our team discovered this issue earlier this week and has now resolved it for our users. We have removed the parameter from URLs presented in dashboards for our user base, but retained the parameterized URLs in our database.

We hope this issue will be resolved soon, but we recommend that you properly configure canonical parameters on your preferred landing pages as a preventative measure.