Why Do URLs Get Messy With Tracking Parameters — and How to Keep Them Clean

If you’ve ever shared a link from a website and noticed a long string of characters attached to the end — something like:

https://biplob.dev/my-article?_gl=1*l0tbr7*_ga*2.12345678.987654321

— you’re not alone.

These extra bits of text, often starting with _gl, _ga, or gclid, can make URLs look messy and unfriendly. They’re confusing to users and annoying to copy, paste, or share. But why are they there? And how can we keep URLs clean without breaking important analytics?

Let’s break it down.

What Are These Tracking Parameters?

The parameters you see — _gl, _ga, and sometimes gclid — are generated by Google Analytics and Google Ads. They serve one main purpose:

To help Google understand how users move between different websites or domains.

This is especially important when:

• A website uses an external booking or checkout system.
• Payment processing happens on a different domain.
• Advertising data needs to be linked to a user’s journey.

To do this, Google temporarily appends unique identifiers to the URL so it can recognize the same user as they move around.

What Is Cross-Domain Tracking?

Normally, each domain creates its own analytics session.

If a user moves from:

biplob.dev → example-booking.com → example-payment.com

Google Analytics would treat each step as three separate visits.

Cross-domain tracking fixes this by passing a user ID between domains using those tracking parameters. It allows analytics to see one seamless journey instead of multiple disconnected visits.

This is extremely useful for:

• Online stores that outsource checkout
• Businesses using external booking systems
• Sites integrating with third-party payment processors

Why Do URLs Look Messy?

Because the tracking value is temporarily added to your browser’s address bar.

This can happen when:

• You click from Google Search results.
• You follow an outbound link with tracking.
• You pass between domains that share analytics data.

While helpful for behind-the-scenes analytics, it creates long, unfriendly URLs for users.

The Good News: You Can Have Clean URLs 

and

 Analytics

Google Analytics only needs these parameters once — at the moment the page loads. After that, it’s completely safe to remove them from the URL.

With a small piece of JavaScript, you can:

• Allow Google Analytics to read the tracking parameters
• Then clean up the URL automatically, without refreshing the page
• Preserve clean, readable links for sharing or bookmarking

Visitors still get accurate analytics tracking, but they only ever see:

https://biplob.dev/my-article

Much nicer.

A Simple Solution: Remove Tracking Parameters After Page Load

Here’s a minimal script many sites use to clean their URLs:

<script>
(function() {
  if (window.history && window.history.replaceState) {
    const params = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
    const removable = ['_gl', '_ga', 'gclid', 'fbclid'];
    let changed = false;

    removable.forEach(key => {
      if (params.has(key)) {
        params.delete(key);
        changed = true;
      }
    });

    if (changed) {
      const newUrl =
        window.location.origin +
        window.location.pathname +
        (params.toString() ? '?' + params.toString() : '') +
        window.location.hash;
      window.history.replaceState({}, document.title, newUrl);
    }
  }
})();
</script>

It runs silently in the background and doesn’t affect SEO, analytics accuracy, or website performance.

When Should You Disable Cross-Domain Tracking?

If your site doesn’t depend on external booking or payment systems — meaning all activity happens directly on biplob.dev — then cross-domain tracking may not be needed at all.

In that case, you can disable it in Google Analytics, and _gl parameters will stop appearing entirely.

Final Thoughts

Tracking parameters may look messy, but they serve an important purpose: helping analytics understand your users’ journey. Thankfully, it’s easy to keep URLs clean while still preserving accurate tracking.

In short:

• Tracking parameters ≠ errors
• Analytics still works even if you clean the URL afterward
• A tiny snippet of code can keep all URLs beautifully clean

If you run a website that uses external booking systems or payment platforms, this simple improvement makes a big difference in user experience, social sharing, and overall URL readability.

If you’d like help implementing this on your site, feel free to reach out!