Canonicalizing tracking-param duplicates: index size ↓44%, quality ↑

Canonicalizing tracking-param duplicates: index size ↓44%, quality ↑

Affiliate site, every outbound campaign appended utm + ref params that generated indexable duplicates.

Duplicate URLs in index ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░ 44% (38,000 of 86,000)

These diluted signals across near-identical pages. We added cross-param canonicals to the clean URL + a sitemap of canonicals only.

Delta over 6 weeks:
— Indexed URLs: 86,000 → 48,000 (↓44%)
— Canonical pages' median position: 15.8 → 12.1 (↓3.7)
— Crawl requests on param URLs: ↓ 81%
— Total organic clicks: ↑ 22% (fewer, stronger URLs)

so what: a smaller index outperformed a bigger one. Consolidating duplicate variants concentrated link and relevance signals instead of spreading them across 38K shadow copies.