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Latest post by nicholas on Thursday, 19 February 2026 16:05 CST
Hi,
I've noticed that UTM tracking parameters are being removed from my URLs. This is breaking my GA4 attribution for Meta Ads.
I'm also using 4SEO and I have contacted their support as well, as I'm trying to identify if the 'cleanup' happens via .htaccess or the SEO extension.
Is there a specific setting in htaccess Maker (like non-canonical redirection) that could be stripping query strings or is there another place in Admintools where these exceptions can be entered?
Thanks,
Lorenzo
If AND ONLY IF you are using Admin Tools URL Redirection feature to redirect a short / older version of the URL to the actual page on your site please remember to set "Keep URL Parameters" to "Add New" or "Override All".
In any other case, it would seem that Admin Tools has nothing to do with your issue. There is nothing which would remove the UTM source URL parameter in the Web Application Firewall and the only redirection features in the .htaccess Maker (e.g. non-www to www, old domain redirection, etc) pass through all URL parameters as a design choice (anything else would break non-SEF URLs in Joomla).
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
OK, thank you. I will check with 4SEO to see if there is an active URL cleaning process that runs automatically.
Even though I know it's not related to Admin Tools, I would like to ask a question so it's clear for people who come across to this ticket what we're talking about.
Which one are you talking about:
A. URLs to your site which include a UTM source are accessed as if the UTM tracking URL parameters are not set; or
B. URLs in your site's content which include a UTM source appear in the output of your site without the UTM tracking URL paramters
In the former case a system plugin running on your site is clearing the URL parameters before Joomla processes the URL. That's not Admin Tools, but it could indeed be a SEF/SEO extension.
In the latter case, I would try to fetch the content of the page with cURL or wget to see if this is indeed the case. If the UTM tracking parameters appear in the source HTML code of the page as fetched by cURL or wget I would suspect a browser extension cleaning these parameters. I have actually seen several privacy, ad-blocker, and script blocking extensions which do exactly that. There's a reason I always have one "virgin" browser with no installed extensions to test sites exhibiting "inexplicable" behaviour. This little morsel of knowledge came after wasting way too many hours chasing windmills back around 2009 to 2010.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
Hi,
To answer your question: it was actually a 'Case C' :)
The UTM parameters were correctly present in the URL and were successfully sent to Google Analytics 4 (I verified this via the browser console). So, no system plugin or browser extension was stripping them.
The 'disappearance' was happening inside Google Analytics 4 itself.
The default setting in GA4 (called 'Blended' identity) applies a privacy filter. If the traffic volume from a specific source is low, GA4 simply hides that source from the reports to protect user identity, making it look like the parameters were never there. By switching to 'Device-based' identity, the filter is removed and all UTM data becomes visible again.
I'm sharing this because it's a common trap that can lead someone to waste hours looking for a technical bug in the site or server, when it's actually just a hidden reporting setting!
Ah! That makes a lot more sense now.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
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