Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) strips UTM tag from URL

[mejorainfotech]

Hello,
If Cloudflare APO is enabled, it strips the UTM tags from the URL after redirection. But if I disabled APO it worked correctly.

Please let me know if there is any way to have APO enabled without having that issue of stripping UTM tags from URLs.

[This is the website URL](https://fundtap.co/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=test&utm_content=test&utm_term=test)

[michael]

This is expected behaviour. Marketing tags such as these are used by JavaScript running on your site, and do not need to be preserved through the cache. Cloudflare will ignore certain query parameters when checking for cached objects.

What is the use case where you need UTM parameters to bypass the cache?

Query parameters and cached responses · Cloudflare Automatic Platform...

[mejorainfotech]

Ideally, it should always preserve the UTM parameters. At least for the first-page visit (so that our analytics can detect UTM, and pull that source info through)

[wu1]

@mejorainfotech

(FundTap | The Invoice Finance Specialists

Hey!
Yes, issue is that your domain redirects from https://fundtap.co/ to FundTap | The Invoice Finance Specialists in my case…
Unfortunately it is know that with redirection APO removes the utms … this is an issue that I haven’t seen solved recently and there are more posts asking for help on this matter

URL parameters being stripped on www redirect

Hi all. I’m brand new, this is my first post… so thank you in advance for reading I have a domain (eg) example . com; that’s using the www. as it’s primary. Some very old links from third-party sites are pointing to the root domain, though. It looks like Cloudflare is (correctly) redirecting traffic from example . com/my-post/ to www . example . com/my-post/ - however any URL / URI parameters are being stripped during the redirect process; making it hard to track users (who’ve e…

Wordpress website with APO when redirect www loses utms

Hi, I have a website in wordpress on the domain econsejos.com The url defined on wordpress config is www.econsejos.com I am using coudflare with APO and when I access the website without the “www” and with “utms” , like this Aceites Florales: Cuál Utilizar en Cada Ocasión it goes to the “www” version which I believe is the wordpress definition of doing it, and losing the query string in the process. I am saying that it is because of Cloudflare APO, because on another website that I have, whi…

Maybe @yevgen could give us a hand?

[wu1]

@mejorainfotech got a change to see the links I left?

[casey9]

Hello,

My Cloudflare ticket ID regarding this issue is #2718110.

When clicking a Google Ad linking to my site, the URL search parameters (?gclid=####) are being removed by an immediate re-direct, caused by the Cloudflare Wordpress plugin. Specifically, disabling the “Automatic Platform Optimization” fixes this issue, but as this is a paid feature I’d prefer to be able to continue using it.

This issue seemed to have been fixed a couple weeks ago, by an apparent update on Cloudflare’s side (though they never made any announcement or news post), however the issue seems to have started again sometime since then. Once again, disabling APO is the only solution currently.

I had a previous Cloudflare Community thread regarding this, and allowed it to be closed when my issue seemed to have been fixed:

Google Ad's URL search params being removed from URL

Hello, When clicking a Google Ad that links to our website, the URL search parameters (?utm_source=google&gclid=###, etc) are being removed from the URL, even when copy/pasting the URL (including search params) directly into the browser’s address bar. [URLParameterMissing-edited] However, other URL search params are not removed. For instance, literally adding “?gclid=test” to the URL works fine. Enabling “Development Mode” in Cloudflare DNS temporarily fixes this and allows Google’s URL sea…

One detail I found seems to be, at least currently, that the URL params are only trimmed when they are not preceded by a ‘/’.
For example, the following URL would have it’s search params removed:
https://my-website.com/landing-page?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7LyL5Zi5_QIVLv3jBx35NQZ6EAAYASAAEgL6jvD_BwE
However this URL would not have it’s search params removed:
https://my-website.com/landing-page/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7LyL5Zi5_QIVLv3jBx35NQZ6EAAYASAAEgL6jvD_BwE

I can provide my website’s URL and re-enable APO if testing is needed, however at the moment I have it disabled so that it does not interfere with our Google Ads tracking.

[casey9]

I have also opened a ticket with Cloudflare’s email support 17 days ago, and never received any actual support, only a response (after 13 days) saying they can’t help since the issue (at that time) seemed to be fixed.

The ticket ID is #2718110, if it can be escalated that would be appreciated.

[cbrandt]

There are similar cases reported by other users and Cloudflare staff is already looking into it. You should hear about any evolution either here or via email.

Meanwhile, if you want to re-enable APO, you could try (I can’t promise this will work, as APO is a magic of its own) to create a Transform Rule:

(http.request.uri.query contains "gclid" and not ends_with(http.request.uri.path, "/"))

Path > Rewrite to > Dynamic = concat("https://",http.host,"/",http.request.uri.path)
Query String = Preserve

[cf-scott]

Hey there!

Sorry for the repeat of this issue. Thank you for bring it to our attention.

I have replied on your ticket, and will update as there is progress.

[wu1]

Hi,
I have APO enabled for quite some time, and already realized an issue with APO removing utms when there is a redirection of the url

I tried help at the time Wordpress website with APO when redirect www loses utms with no succes… the issue is identified, but since I don’t have a lot of redirections daily, it’s not too bad.

Problem is on the 26 of February something changed on APO, and now almost everything with utms just ends up losing it…

I have a big chunk of traffic from facebook, so what I did notice was that on that day my traffic with utms just fell, and the facebook traffic converted o traffic from lm.facebook.com / referral

On the 27th I thought it was an issue with Facebook Link Checker, but no one I knew had same issue so on the 28th I tried disabling APO and pufff… issue gone, on GA real time the lm.facebook.com traffic just started instantly falling and traffic with utms rise…

So now I can’t activate APO, was there a change made on the 27th to APO technology that could explain this? Nothing on my websites changed… and other ones that I have with CF but without APO active just didn’t have this issue…

I have seen a similar post here but the reason there is about redirection

Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) strips UTM tag from URL

Hello, If Cloudflare APO is enabled, it strips the UTM tags from the URL after redirection. But if I disabled APO it worked correctly. Please let me know if there is any way to have APO enabled without having that issue of stripping UTM tags from URLs. [This is the website URL](https://fundtap.co/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=test&utm_content=test&utm_term=test)

Although I believe that working correctly , the redirection should lose the utms?

@yevgen any input maybe? Or what could I do to debug this further?

[wu1]

bump… because I am almost sure that this is entirely on APO side, not on my configuration…

[matteo]

Merged all three similar topics here, what @michael said here is the current answer…

Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) strips UTM tag from URL

This is expected behaviour. Marketing tags such as these are used by JavaScript running on your site, and do not need to be preserved through the cache. Cloudflare will ignore certain query parameters when checking for cached objects. What is the use case where you need UTM parameters to bypass the cache?

The question is that the redirect shouldn’t occur.

I can’t reproduce it on my set-up, though. Where is the redirect set-up, @wu1, @casey9, @mejorainfotech?

[aseure_cf]

Hey everyone and thanks @matteo for merging the topics,

I’ll try to look that issue. Cannot promise anything but I’ll give it a serious try. Those issues have been opened for too long already and we can see how it can be a common issue for many users.

I’ll keep you updated.

[aseure_cf]

Hello again,

I’ve set up a dummy Wordpress website behind Cloudflare with APO enabled and wasn’t able to reproduce.

I don’t think there is no issue, but that my configuration is probably not quite the same as yours yet @wu1 @casey9 @mejorainfotech, so I would need more informations regarding your own setup.

While I’m waiting for your own configuration, I’ll ask internally if anyone else may have any guess.

My setup

Cloudflare DNS setup

Cloudflare APO plugin configuration and version

Wordpress and Site Address URLs

Now, when I try to access www.aseure.uk, with the same UTM parameters as @mejorainfotech, there is no redirect yet, and no problem:

https://aseure.uk/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=test&utm_content=test&utm_term=test

Finally, when I try to access aseure.uk, which is redirected by Wordpress (as far as I understand) to www.aseure.uk, with the exact same UTM parameters, I get redirected via a 301 from aseure.uk to www.aseure.uk, and the parameters are correctly there:

https://aseure.uk/?utm_source=test&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=test&utm_content=test&utm_term=test

[casey9]

Hi,

I’ve re-enabled APO & cleared all caches so that the issue is repeatable on my site. Following the link below results in the URL params being removed:
https://example.com/landing-page?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7LyL5Zi5_QIVLv3jBx35NQZ6EAAYASAAEgL6jvD_BwE&cftest=true
However if you add a / before the “?gclid” the redirect does not happen, and the URL is unmodified:
https://example.com/landing-page/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7LyL5Zi5_QIVLv3jBx35NQZ6EAAYASAAEgL6jvD_BwE&cftest=true

My config

I have APO enabled, “Cache by Device Type” is NOT checked:

Wordpress General Settings:

Cloudflare DNS:

Cloudflare Nameservers:

[edit] removed my website’s URL & re-disabled APO for the time being since the issue is repeatable on other sites now.

[matteo]

Oh, I can finally reproduce!

It doesn’t redirect with any query string, just some of them and only on actual paths, not the main index page.

Why, I can’t. I can share more details, if you want @aseure_cf… you need to follow @cloonan’s instruction though, as we need to go private

[matteo]

This is such a specific case, which requires multiple separate specific cases…
Let’s see if I can share a case @aseure_cf can reproduce himself without sharing any of my private domains.

You need a path, no end /, analytics query parameters and no custom query params.

For brevity I will use just one of the utm_* params, one is enough to reproduce the issue.

These will work just fine:

https://example.com/?gclid=test
https://example.com?gclid=test
https://example.com/path/?gclid=test

https://example.com/?utm_source=test
https://example.com?utm_source=test
https://example.com/path/?utm_source=test

https://example.com/?custom=test
https://example.com?custom=test
https://example.com/path/?custom=test
https://example.com/path?custom=test

These will, too (even though they will be re-ordered):

https://example.com/?gclid=test&custom=test
https://example.com?gclid=test&custom=test
https://example.com/path/?gclid=test&custom=test
https://example.com/path?gclid=test&custom=test

https://example.com/?utm_source=test&custom=test
https://example.com?utm_source=test&custom=test
https://example.com/path/?utm_source=test&custom=test
https://example.com/path?utm_source=test&custom=test

These will not:

https://example.com/path?gclid=test
https://example.com/path?utm_source=test

[aseure_cf]

The reason it was working in my DevTools is because of the Disable Cache checkbox being checked. This was injecting a Cache-Control: No-Cache header which hid the issue. Without the header, I’m able to reproduce.

Keeping you updated.

[wu1]

Thanks for taking this head on!
I’ll try to replicate the issue on a smaller website see if it occurs too and will give you an update also…

[wu1]

Hi again…Activated APO “add on” for a smaller website…
Please check video olt_apo_utms_bug.mp4 - Google Drive

What I noticed, is that it only loses utms when I use “?utm_source”, if I use something like “?index” it doesn’t lose the utm… behaving as I “expected”

So, when accessing https://onlinetips.com/?index=1231 it redirects to https://www.onlinetips.com/?index=1231 and keeps query parameters.

If acessing https://onlinetips.com/?utm_source=1231 it will go to https://www.onlinetips.com losing query parameters.