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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google + Local Pages No Longer Supporting GA Tracking Codes

Update 10/24: I have tested the ? and it now seems to be working. It appears that Google has fixed this.

Update: Solution found! Tony “Tiggerito” McCreath has figured out that apparently the problem is caused by the ? in the GA code. If you replace the ? With a # symbol it works, redirects without the ugly error message and still provides the data to GA.

Historically if you wanted to measure traffic to your site from Plus page for local you could add a Google Analtyics tracking code to your site’s URL.

Whether this is a bug or not or permanent change is not yet clear but since around the first of the month if your link in the G+ Dashboard to your website includes a tracking code, Google throws off this ugly message. This new behavior was pointed out to me by Alyssa Vanderpool of RedNovaLabs in the Local U forums.

error-message

We have inquired of Google whether the action is as intended or is a bug. Until such time though as we find out or its fixed, you should remove any GA tracking codes added to your local listing.

Update 4:00 PM: Sharon Conner of Sleeptrain pointed out in the comments that this is not affecting when the listing shows in search results and I have determined that it isn’t a problem from Google Maps either. It only manifests itself when clicking through from the G+ Page. Thus not a bad as originally thought and most likely a bug in G+ rather than some intentional policy change.