Here’s how we turned things around for a pet food company selling through Shopify when the SRSLTID parameter started causing chaos:
Why It Matters
Ever had a traffic tank without warning? That’s what happened to this pet food company. They’d been doing everything right, but in August, traffic nosedived. They were panicking because it wasn’t just seasonal or a random blip — it was the SRSLTID parameter rearing its ugly head.
They reached out to us after catching one of our YouTube video explaining how to handle this exact problem. If you haven’t heard of it yet, SRSLTID is a URL query string slapped on by Google Merchant Center. This extra string was messing with their SEO rankings in a big way. Here’s how we fixed it.
The Problem
The company was losing search rankings, fast. That pesky ?srsltid= parameter was showing up on tons of pages, and to make things worse, it coincided with a Google update in August, which just fueled the confusion.
They sell premium dog food, and their sales dropped hard. That’s when they called us. They noticed their pages looked like this: (we can’t share the actual URL out of respect). So consider the following example
www.example.com/?srsltid=some-random-string
Instead of:
www.example.com/product
This wasn’t just annoying. It was nuking their rankings, affecting their ability to track data accurately, and making Google treat each page with a SRSLTID string as a duplicate.
The Solution
Phase 1: Identification
First things first, we ran a full sweep of their site to identify all URLs infected with the SRSLTID parameter. We hit up Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to pull a complete list. This helped us see just how many URLs were impacted (spoiler: it was more than anyone wanted to admit).
Phase 2: Immediate Remediation
We didn’t just stop at identifying the problem. We took immediate action:
- Noindex Tags: We applied noindex tags on all the messed-up SRSLTID pages. Shopify didn’t make this easy, but we found a way around their system to get those tags in without touching the clean URLs.
This is where our custom solution comes in handy for you. You know the drill—reach out to us.
- Updated robots.txt: We added custom rules to disallow Google from crawling those janky URLs:
- Disabled Auto-tagging: We hopped into Google Merchant Center and turned off auto-tagging so this parameter wouldn’t pop up again.
Phase 3: Long-term Strategy
After the immediate cleanup, we went into long-term prevention mode:
- Canonical Tags: Ensured that every page with a SRSLTID was pointing back to its clean, canonical version. This way, Google wouldn’t keep indexing the dirty versions.
- Sitemap Audit: We scrubbed their sitemap to make sure Google would only fetch clean URLs moving forward.
Players
- Client: Shopify-based premium pet food company (healthy dog food).
- Us: The clean-up crew, fixing SEO disasters with custom strategies.
Opportunities
This wasn’t just a fix; it was a wake-up call. SRSLTID was wrecking rankings for tons of Shopify sites, so this cleanup opened up opportunities to educate others in the same niche.We didn’t just help one client—we handled multiple Shopify sites, including some with millions of traffic.
Predictions
Moving forward, it’s unclear when this issue will be addressed on a large scale, and when a universal solution will be available. Unfortunately, we can’t wait—we have to think about our business and take every opportunity to protect it. We did it for our business, and we’re ready to do the same for you. We understand the frustration when something like this pops up out of nowhere and puts your business at risk.
Google is likely to continue adding random tags and parameters to URLs. Businesses need to stay on top of this stuff. We expect more challenges like this to pop up, but now we’ve got a solid playbook to handle them fast.
Risks
Ignoring this? You could lose a huge chunk of traffic. And trust me, this problem isn’t going away on its own. For Shopify users specifically, the platform doesn’t make it super simple to add custom code tags or adjust robots.txt files. If you don’t have a fix, you’re risking not just traffic but potentially a hit to conversions, too.
Key Lessons
- Stay Vigilant: These Google Merchant Center updates can sneak up on you. If you see a random parameter like ?srsltid=, deal with it immediately.
- Customize Solutions: Shopify can be limiting. But with some coding tricks, we found ways to fix the SRSLTID issue with the situation.
Hot Takes
Google isn’t always on your side when it comes to new updates. They roll them out one after another, and it can either boost your business or hurt it. Don’t sit around waiting for things to fix themselves—get ahead of it before it snowballs.
Haters
There were a few “haters” who said this wasn’t a big deal or that the SRSLTID wouldn’t cause real problems. Guess what? Traffic doesn’t lie. When the numbers tank, you know something’s up. If you’re waiting around for Google to figure it out on their end, you’ll be waiting a long time while your rankings drop further.
Now, the client’s rankings are back, and they’re focusing on growing their social media and other marketing channels instead of worrying about SEO problems.