Getting Two Different Stat Reports For The Same Webpage — Why?

• Why am I getting different Google Analytics & Mediavine entries for the same URL with and without the slash:
  • https://tipbuzz.com/strawberry-jello-cake
  • https://tipbuzz.com/strawberry-jello-cake/

  I can't imagine there'd be any SEO impact from this, but wanted to double check... Thanks

Answer:

It's good that you checked because there is indeed a negative SEO impact from this.

The fact is, Google sees these as two different URLs — one that contains the "trailing slash" and one that doesn't. And, because Google sees these as two different URLs, the visitor stats relevant to this page are being divided.

This is a problem because the popularity and authority of the page itself is also being diluted. This division of stats does most certainly affect your SEO in a negative way.

To correct this problem, and avoid it in the future, you must set up your server to force site visitors to the preferred version of the URL, which typically is the "trailing slash" URL as in; https://tipbuzz.com/strawberry-jello-cake/.

Fixing the problem is as simple as adding a few lines of code to your site's .htaccess file as such.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
 RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

And in case you don't already know, the .htaccess (pronounced "dot-H-T-access") file is a simple text file that resides in the root directory of your website where, typically, your home page also resides. It's uses are many and one of them is to consolidate all of the traffic attempting to access various URL versions of the same web page into one so that visitor stats, pagerank, popularity, and authority are optimized, maximized, and accurately totaled. ...