Never Use This Google Analytics Setting
Management Summary
If you click on the small question mark icon next to the “Default Page” field, you will get the following explanation of the function:
“Enter your domain’s default page so that multiple URLs pointing to the same page are treated as the same entry in reports. For example, if “yoursampledomain.de” and “yoursampledomain.de/index.html” are the same page, you can enter “index.html” in this field. Learn more…”
This explanation suggests that the following happens as a result of the setting in the example given:
- “/” becomes “/index.html”
- “/index.html” remains in Google Analytics
- This means that from now on all page views will only be assigned to the page “/index.html”
in Google Analytics
In fact, all pages that end with “/” are supplemented with “index.html”.
For example:
- “/men/trousers/” to “/men/trousers/index.html”
- “/products/” to “/products/index.html”
etc.
As you can see, the hint behind the question mark icon is more wrong than helpful. We therefore recommend leaving the “Default page” field empty.
